


The Longest Time

by jiminsleftshoulder



Series: Times Like These [2]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Adventures, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Best Friends, But mostly fluff, Coffeeshops, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Side Jongsang, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Stupid characters, but it can totally be read on its own, defying soulmate logic, eventual side woosan, i shouldve named this fic the search for san, lots of fluff, lots of side ships, platonic Wooyoung/Mingi, sequel fic, side seongjoong, spilling coffee, teeny tiny bit of angst, that and yungi being gross and cute, that's all it is, theyre too chaotic but its fun, very brief mention of character illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28870794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiminsleftshoulder/pseuds/jiminsleftshoulder
Summary: Mingi is just a normal college student, concerned with normal college student things: forcing himself awake during classes, making the most out of a five dollar bill for dinner, and being as overly affectionate as possible to his soulmate, Yunho (definitely not just to piss Hongjoong off, though that was an added bonus). When Yeosang finds Jongho, and Hongjoong and Seonghwa are revealed to be long-lost soulmates (plot twist, I know), Mingi feels all the pieces of his life falling into place. And then there’s Jung Wooyoung, crashing into his life with spilt coffee and a strange request: for Mingi to help him track down his soulmate before the timer on his wrist reaches zero.
Relationships: Choi Jongho/Kang Yeosang, Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi, Jung Wooyoung & Song Mingi, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Series: Times Like These [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117274
Comments: 13
Kudos: 69





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again! I'm back with the promised sequel to T-Minus! This is admittedly a lot longer than I was intending, and I went a bit crazy with the idea - turning a sequel to a short one-shot into a multi-chaptered fic - I'm so sorry.
> 
> This concept became my favorite thing ever, it's perfect for Mingi and it's perfect for Wooyoung, and I loved getting into the side relationships from T-Minus (if you haven't read yet, it's perfectly okay to read this one on it's own, but if you're interested, it's the original seongjoong oneshot I wrote :) ). I fell in love with Yunho a lot writing this, and Wooyoung too, and Mingi, and I'm honestly upset that it's over. 
> 
> There is a brief mention of some side character illness - the character doesn't appear in the fic, but if you have questions about it, let me know!
> 
> Lastly, I made a playlist for this fic that I am absolutely in love with, and if anyone is interested, I am totally up for adding it to spotify and dropping the link ;)) Happy reading, and stay safe out there!

_6 years, 147 days, 11 hours, 43 minutes, 2 seconds_

Mingi likes to think the beginning for him was in high school. 

He can’t even remember much of his life before then, except maybe the moments leading up to the beginning where he was so nervous he nearly cut a finger off shaving or where he was so frustrated because no matter how hard he tried, the bow tie he’d picked for the occasion would always tilt a little to the left. His mother had even helped him, but on the bus ride to school, Mingi’s hair had been ruffled and that pesky little bow tie somehow made its way off-center.

Meeting Yunho for the first time was a clear start to Mingi’s life. Mingi remembers the whole thing so vividly; he hadn’t even been looking at his timer those last few moments to be sure it was him, and yet as his eyes found Yunho’s, he saw his entire future in that puppy dog face. It was as if nothing in life mattered until Yunho, that nothing in life would ever matter without Yunho. 

Mingi still feels this way. 

He feels it so strongly when he wakes up beside Yunho, just moments before their alarm goes off, and he can see every edge and curve of Yunho’s face lit up by the sunlight streaming in through the crack in their curtains. 

He rolls over to turn off his phone before the alarm starts blaring and wakes the sleeping boy beside him, and then turns back to face Yunho, face to face with their noses nearly touching. Mingi knows he could stay here forever, listening to Yunho’s soft breaths and watching the older boy sleep, such a peaceful expression on his soft face, his nose scrunching cutely and his eyes starting to blink tiredly and-

“Oh,” Mingi breathes, “Goodmorning, sunshine.”

Yunho yawns, and Mingi smiles, his heart doing a thing as if this isn’t a daily occurrence, as if Yunho yawning is some monumental thing that Mingi has never experienced before. And Mingi supposes it is, because Yunho yawning today is new just like Yunho yawning yesterday was new, and Yunho yawning tomorrow will definitely be new and Mingi can hardly wait for it. And then Mingi is stuck wondering how he can handle anything when he can barely handle Yunho yawning, when something so simple feels like his whole world is right there in front of him.

Yunho is looking at him, his eyes raking over Mingi’s face like he’s outlining every inch of it. When they flit up to his eyes, a small smile appears on his face. “Were you watching me sleep?”

Mingi ignores the way Yunho’s poofy cheeks seem to flush slightly, because he’s sure his heart will explode if he thinks about it too hard, and says instead, “Do you remember when we met?”

Yunho’s eyes crinkle as his smile grows wider, and Mingi feels like he can’t breathe. “Of course I do, you wore a little bow tie, remember? With the tie and your hair, I could tell you had tried so hard; I felt stupid in my t-shirt and jeans.”

“It was Harry Potter,” Mingi reminded him, bumping their noses together. “And I could use all the help when it comes to you.”

Yunho shakes his head, but he’s still smiling, and he doesn’t argue back. “I wish we had pictures -- do we have pictures?” he asks, but Mingi can’t answer because he’s lost in Yunho’s warm eyes and then eyeing his soft lips, and when Yunho catches him, his eyes flicking down and then back up again, Mingi goes for it, closing the (nearly nonexistent) gap between the two and pressing his lips against Yunho’s. 

It’s soft and it’s quick, nothing but a short peck, but when it’s over Yunho’s eyes are closed, and Mingi feels his heart soar as it’s like they’re waking up again, like they’re waking up and everything’s brand new. 

“I just need a picture with baby Mingi and a bow tie,” Yunho says, a little breathlessly, his eyes still closed. “The little bow tie and your hair all done and didn’t you have glasses? Baby glasses on baby Mingi--”

Mingi kisses him again, and they both melt into it immediately, bodies gravitating towards one another and lips slotting against each other perfectly like they’re pieces of the same puzzle. Mingi registers somewhere in the fuzziness of his brain that he needs to ask his mother for pictures later, but it feels like there’s no room for thought, only for Yunho, _Yunho, Yunho._

There’s nothing frantic about it; Mingi kisses Yunho slowly and surely, his hand cradling his poofy cheek and brushing their noses together lightly. He feels more connected to Yunho than ever in this moment, like he’s not only conscious of the way his own breath hitches and his heart beats quickly, the way he’s holding Yunho and relaxing into him, but every way Yunho moves, breathes, and touches as well. 

When he pulls away, he kisses Yunho’s nose, cheek, forehead, and then lips again, and then rests their foreheads together. They’re so close, when he speaks, it’s like he’s mumbling against Yunho’s lips, and he can feel every breath ghosting across his face. 

“It still feels like then,” Mingi breathes, “Like everything is so new, all these years later. Like I wake up and I’m seeing you for the first time. Like it’s the start of something amazing, still, even now.”

“It’s the start of everything,” Yunho corrects, and Mingi smiles so wide because he understands, because of course he understands, he always understands, and he will always understand. There’s nothing quite like that feeling, in a whole world of feelings, the feeling of being understood to this level, and Mingi wants to kiss Yunho so bad but he can’t because he can’t stop grinning. 

Yunho pecks his lips once more anyways, though it ends up missing mostly and landing on Mingi’s front teeth. 

Mingi feels a bit dazed, but he knows it’s time to get up, so he rolls over away from Yunho and off the edge of the bed, kicking his feet out at just the right time to catch himself (he most certainly is not responsible for that one time he fell off, despite whatever Yunho likes to claim). 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Yunho whines, trying to grasp onto the back of Mingi’s shirt as he moves away. 

Mingi turns around to look at him, all spread out across the bed, a pout on his face as he reaches for him, and every single part of Mingi wants him back in that bed. It’s ridiculously unfair of Yunho to put Mingi in this position, who’s never been very good at self control, and he nearly chokes on his “To make breakfast?” that comes out so uncertain it’s like he’s asking Yunho for his permission. 

It’s a miracle Mingi hasn’t moved yet, because Yunho cutely kicks all the covers off and climbs over to Mingi’s side of the bed, pulling himself up to join him. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Mingi squeaks, because he has greater things to worry about than the tone of his voice when Yunho’s hair is sticking out in all directions the way that it is and he’s stretching his arms over his head and _yawning again I mean what is it with the yawning does he want to give Mingi a heart attack?_

Yunho snorts. “To help you make breakfast. Did you really think I’d let you go on your own? To use our kitchen?”

Mingi pouts. He isn’t _that_ terrible in the kitchen; he’s been living in an apartment with Yunho for over a year and hasn’t started any fires. He opens his mouth to protest, but the older boy shakes his head.

“Yet,” Yunho answers his thoughts, ruffling his hair on his way out of their bedroom. “I’m pretty sure Seonghwa will fucking beat my ass if I let you burn down the apartment complex.”

Yunho has a point there, and cooking with him sounds nice, so Mingi loses the pout and follows his boyfriend into the kitchen. 

Mingi likes to think they’re cute and domestic, making eggs together and singing _Frozen_ as they dance around the kitchen. To be fair to Yunho, though, which Mingi lives his life to be, the _Frozen_ is mostly Mingi. And the dancing is really just Mingi running from Yunho as he tries to hit him with his wooden spoon (no, that is not an innuendo, unfortunately). And making eggs is really Mingi making some weird shit and Yunho cooking them a nice breakfast. 

“INTO THE UNKNO--OWW!” Mingi screeches when a wooden spoon hits him square in the nose. 

Yunho shushes him, wrapping his arms around Mingi’s waist from behind. Mingi pouts at the wooden spoon now shoved in his face, especially when Yunho uses it to rub his injured nose. But then Yunho coos in his ear, kissing his neck, and then his shoulder, and Mingi’s pretty sure he’s floating a bit off the ground, because a lack of gravity is the only thing that can explain why his knees haven’t given out yet and sent him sinking to the floor. 

“The neighbors, Mingi,” Yunho reminds him, and Mingi knows he’s talking about Seonghwa down the hall, “it’s still early.”

There are few things that Mingi is scared of in this world (or maybe more than a few but who’s counting anyways) and one of them is an angry Seonghwa. He stops singing _Frozen._

They stay in the kitchen to eat the eggs, sharing off of one plate with one fork and Mingi tries not to feel too pleased when Yunho puts a hand under his chin and feeds him a bite. It’s a bit disappointing to know that everything Mingi made ended up in the trash, but Yunho’s eggs are good, and Mingi tells him so when they’re finished, mumbling it into the crook of his neck where he has made himself at home. 

Yunho rubs his back, reminding him they have to get ready for classes, but Mingi doesn’t want to let go, so they end up doing a weird shuffle to the bedroom to get some clean clothes, and then again on their way to the bathroom. Things would’ve been much easier if Yunho had agreed to carrying Mingi, but apparently he’s _too big._ When Mingi offers to hold Yunho instead, the older boy just laughs and hugs him tighter, which Mingi takes as his very convincing offer to compromise. 

If someone told Hongjoong that Yunho and Mingi brush their teeth together, like they’re some old married couple taking turns spitting into the same sink, he’d have a fit, and that’s why no one tells Hongjoong that Yunho and MIngi brush their teeth together. 

But Mingi loves every minute of it, especially once they start their war of making the funniest faces they can think of to each other, the ultimate goal to make the other spit up toothpaste on themselves. Everyone always ends up with a bit of spit down their sleepshirts, but it’s all in good fun, especially when just licking his lips has Yunho practically snorting toothpaste. 

While Yunho combs through his hair repeatedly, attempting to get it to stop sticking straight up, Mingi runs a hand through his own, fluffing it up slightly and calling it quits. He smirks at Yunho’s glare in the mirror, and ruffles his boyfriend’s blonde mop as soon as he’s done combing it. Because he doesn’t want to get murdered, he makes up for it with a warm back hug and a kiss to Yunho’s cheek. 

They’re dressed and ready, finally, and Mingi can’t stop looking at Yunho through the mirror. He turns to the boy in his arms, nosing his ear, and giving him another small kiss. “I love you,” he whispers, breathing in Yunho’s hair and eyeing the older boy in the mirror. 

Yunho’s hand comes up to pinch Mingi’s cheek, tapping him slightly to get him to let go long enough for Yunho to turn around to face him. Mingi sighs as Yunho’s arms come around his lower back, pulling him back in closer. “I love you too,” he says, smiling so prettily as he gives Mingi's nose a little nudge with his own before pulling away altogether and leaving the bathroom. 

Mingi stays there an embarrassingly long amount of time, attempting to collect himself and remember how to breathe. 

When he thinks he’s got it down, he heads out to go find his bag and keys, because as much as he would like to forget he has classes and real world things to get to, he does have a bus to catch. 

Yunho is waiting for him by the door, since his classes are a bit later on in the day, and Mingi has to head out earlier. He hates leaving Yunho, but he loves kissing Yunho, and so that’s what he does, aiming a kiss to the corner of his mouth as a quick goodbye. 

Yunho has other ideas, though, and grabs his shirt, pulling him back in for a deeper kiss. They kiss against the door until Mingi can’t remember his own name, and then Yunho pulls away, kissing his nose quickly and leaving him with a “good luck, babe!” Mingi stands there a bit mystified for about 30 seconds before he determines that he looks too much like an idiot to remain frozen much longer. That, and he’s going to be late to the bus.

Once Mingi makes it out into the hallway (a great accomplishment, honestly), he hovers around the door a bit to make sure he didn’t forget something important before leaving. He checks his pocket for his keys, which are (surprisingly) there, and then straightens his backpack and heads out. 

He’s two steps down the hall when Seonghwa’s apartment door opens, and a boy much shorter than Seonghwa steps out. 

“Hongjoong?” he calls, and the other boy whips his head around to meet Mingi’s eyes, looking like a deer caught in the headlights with one foot still halfway inside his boyfriend’s apartment. 

Seonghwa and Hongjoong, despite having known each other since they were practically born and being soulmates (plot twist, right?), had decided it was still too soon to move in together. Or so they told all of their friends. What Mingi was seeing was clearly contradicting that, but hey, who was he to judge?

Hongjoong is still looking like he’s committed some crime, like he’s waiting for whatever words come out of Mingi’s mouth next. 

“So, the weather’s been looking pretty nice lately, huh?” Mingi says. 

Hongjoong sighs, taking his foot out of the door and joining Mingi as they begin to head down the hall. “Yeah,” he says, shaking his hands out in a very obvious sign of relief. “Yeah, it has.”

They’re barely to the stairwell when Mingi speaks up again. “So, are you fucking yet?”

He’s definitely judging.

They walk to the bus stop together, Hongjoong redder in the face than Mingi’s ever seen him, and it’s honestly refreshing. Mingi giggles a little at the boy who’s now all flustered. 

“And who the hell do you think you’re laughing at?” Hongjoong snaps. Despite being half his size, Hongjoong is one of the other (few) things in the world Mingi is afraid of, and he shrinks a bit at the older boy’s threatening glare. He holds himself back from singing the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song, cause he’s not sure how well that will go over. 

Riding a bus to campus is a pain in the ass, and they dodge what feels like a crowd of people and a few suspicious substances Mingi prays aren’t bodily fluids to find a pair of open seats in the back. 

Mingi refuses to sit down, because he’ll “crinkle his pants.” Hongjoong reminds him that it’s “wrinkle” and also he’s currently wearing jeans, but Mingi chooses to ignore him, spending his time instead attempting to balance himself while the bus moves without touching anything else. 

Unfortunately for his bus-riding partner, he is very bad at balancing on a moving bus, and “without touching anything else” ends up excluding Hongjoong’s bright blue head of hair, which, after the third _incident,_ he reveals took him hours to style. Among other words. Which Mingi would like to ignore. (Because “hours to style” means he was at Seonghwa’s apartment a lot longer than he will admit to Mingi). (And also because they were mean). 

If he’s being honest, the crinkling was an excuse. He loves his little game. But Hongjoong’s here, so he’s not being honest. 

He tries to ask Hongjoong about his new relationship, and how Seonghwa is doing, but Hongjoong threatens to put his earbuds in if he won’t shut up, and so he focuses more on his game. 

They make it to campus, and are bombarded by what Hongjoong refers to as “millions of sweaty college students” (there are maybe a dozen people in their immediate vicinity max). Mingi doesn’t mind the others, but he knows Hongjoong pretty well, and so he’s prepared to go find somewhere quieter to regroup for a moment. 

But the older boy just waves his hand, admitting that he was planning on ditching Mingi anyways to go hang out in his studio and get some work done. 

Mingi sighs, waving as Hongjoong walks away across to the opposite side of campus. Mingi doesn’t spend much time in the arts building, but he knows his friend has his own fancy shmancy studio there where he can record music for his classes. (Mingi knows it better as the place Hongjoong likes to go to avoid humanity, and, by extension, Mingi). 

But it’s okay, and Mingi doesn’t mind a whole lot, making his own way across campus towards the humanities building, which is on the West side, far from Hongjoong’s fancy studio (he’s pretty sure the thing has AC, unlike half of the other old ass academic buildings, which isn’t really fair). He sees a lot of students along the way, and waves to a pair of boys he knows chilling on a park bench in the middle of the quad. 

“Felix!” he yells across the green space, like they’re not in a public place and there’s not a bunch of other people around. 

But the blonde-haired boy, who had previously had his head in the lap of his older friend, Chan (Mingi doesn’t know him too well, just through Felix), jumps up and begins waving like a maniac at Mingi. 

“Mingi! How have you been?!” he screams back, just as loud, and the boy beside him covers his ears. 

Mingi flashes a thumbs up. “I’ve been good! You?!”

“Doing just great! How’s Yunho?!”

“Great! Chan?!”

“I’m doing fine!” Chan yells too, and Mingi grins at the pair. 

“Well I’m off! Have a great day!”

Felix’s voice follows him halfway to the humanities building. “You too!”

Mingi’s first class on Thursdays is European History. It’s never too bad (the short attention span suffers, always), and the professor rarely keeps them the full time, so Mingi’s out of there with plenty of time before his media studies (moviemaking!) class. 

He even manages to run into Jongho on his way from the humanities building, and catches up with him quickly outside. 

“Jongho!” he wraps his arm around the other, tucking him into his arm. Jongho squeals a bit, and manages to break through (Mingi is much stronger, he just let him win so that he’d feel good about himself), swatting at the older boy when he tries to ruffle his hair. 

“Are you on for lunch again today?” Jongho asks, and Mingi grins even brighter. 

“How are you and Yeosang? Are you moving in yet?” Jongho splutters a bit, his ears turning pink, and Mingi is beginning to enjoy this effect he has on others -- first Hongjoong, and now the younger boy. He uses Jongho’s embarrassment to his advantage, pulling him back in to mess up his hair. 

“We’re not even -- we haven’t --” Jongho takes a deep breath. “I think I asked you a question first.”

Mingi skips ahead a bit, not wanting to be too late to his next class, and sends Jongho a thumbs up. “I’ll be there!”

As much as he teases the younger, Mingi really likes Jongho, and he can proudly say that out of all of Yeosang’s friends, Jongho has warmed up to Mingi the fastest. He turns to glance at the boy once more (who has his hands cupped over his ears to cool them down), and then smiles to himself, moving on to make some movies. 

Mingi likes his schedule, except that he can never find time for lunch with his boyfriend, who has his first class soon after Mingi’s last one ends.

They do have a lovely Thursday tradition though, one that Mingi would totally say didn’t involve making out in the back hallway on the third floor of the science building, but that wouldn’t be being completely honest. 

“I love you,” Yunho breathes against him, and Mingi gasps when he sinks his teeth down into his bottom lip. He really wishes he could control himself sometimes, but he is pretty sure he let out a whine somewhere in there around the time Yunho soothes the bite with his tongue. 

In retrospect, it probably isn’t the best place for making out -- Mingi’s back pressed uncomfortably against a bulletin with signups for the theater department’s upcoming play, the occasional pushpin stabbing his backbone -- but Mingi doesn’t have a lot of time for thinking about past regrets when he’s with Yunho, and his body’s pressed against his like this, and his breath is hot in his face, and he’s whispering words against his mouth and --

“Ahem,” comes a voice to the left of them, and they part (truly, truly unfortunately) to look at Seonghwa, standing there with an unreadable expression on his face (but that Mingi can guess isn’t happy). “Class?” he asks Yunho, who groans before reaching for his backpack. 

Oh yeah, Mingi did neglect to mention that Seonghwa is often a part of their little tradition. He shares a calc lecture with Yunho, and the two ride to campus together in the morning. It isn’t ideal, Mingi knows, but...well that’s really it. It’s not ideal. 

Yunho combs a bit of hair behind Mingi’s ear, and leans in for another soft kiss, which Mingi melts into almost as much as the last one. “I’ll see you this afternoon?”

Mingi nods against him. “Good luck at class.” 

Yunho smiles his little smile before jogging off to meet up with Seonghwa, and Mingi remains stuck there, pushpins digging into his back, trying to catch his breath, which seems to be becoming a recurring theme for him. 

He eventually heads off to find Jongho and Yeosang for lunch, once he’s regained at least some of his working brain cells. 

Mingi loves his friends -- he’s known Yeosang so long and Jongho has already managed to worm his way into their little family, the little fucker -- but they’re a bit unbearable to eat lunch with, alone at least. 

The two claim they’re not romantically involved yet, and they’re just teasing out this whole soulmate thing before they make any drastic decisions, starting out just friends, and Mingi could accept that, he _would_ accept that, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s utter bullshit. They get a booth to sit in in the dining hall, and the pair sit across from Mingi, their thighs touching and talking amongst themselves like they’re the only people in the world. As they talk (and Mingi eats), Jongho is trailing his eyes over every inch of Yeosang’s face like it was etched by the gods and Yeosang is staring back at him so intensely Mingi is a little afraid they’ll start going at it any second, right in front of his salad. Or, right in front of his salad if he had a salad, but he doesn’t because he’s not that healthy and also the ones in the dining hall are kinda sus. 

To save him from his misery, Mingi begs Hongjoong to come join them so he’s not alone, but Hongjoong only leaves him on read, and Mingi is too offended to push it further. So he ends up suffering his way through it, convinced it’s some sort of cosmic karma for forcing Seonghwa to watch him and Yunho making out, or maybe for falling asleep on Seonghwa’s couch again, or even that one time when Hongjoong walked in on the pair when Mingi was right in the middle of--

“So do you have any other plans today, Mingi?” Yeosang asks politely, finally turning towards Mingi like he’s just realized he’s there. 

Mingi shrugs. “Studying, sleeping. Not sure yet.”

Yeosang nods, looks like he’s trying to come up with something else to say, and then turns back to Jongho with the lovey eyes that Mingi thinks are a little scary, coming from the older boy. 

After eating, Mingi debates studying in the library with his bit of extra free time this afternoon, but he ultimately settles on heading home to take a nap. 

Things feel as though they’re starting to fall into place -- Yeosang finding Jongho, Seonghwa and Hongjoong getting together -- it’s like everything in his life is coming together, Mingi notes, and then he proceeds to step in one of the mysterious fluids on the bus. He makes it home okay though, even without Hongjoong’s hair to grab onto for balance. 

Mingi is an expert at taking naps. He’s so good at it, they should give him some sort of award for it, or build some sort of nap-taking shrine in his honor. Mingi wonders what a nap-taking shrine would look like, if it’d be some sort of statue with him sleeping, and then he passes out for nearly five hours and realizes he’d never deserve something so epic. 

“Goodmorning, sunshine,” Yunho grins when he finally makes it out to the kitchen where he’s making dinner (or where he’s _already_ made dinner, since it’s now around seven o’clock). 

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Mingi whines, pouting at Yunho despite pulling him into a big hug. 

Yunho snuggles closer to Mingi, burying his nose in his hair. “You were too cute, I’m sorry,” he mumbles, and Mingi forgives him instantly. 

Pulling away rather reluctantly, he sighs at his boyfriend’s beautiful face. “I’m really fucked for this English test tomorrow morning,” he admits. 

He wants nothing more than to climb back into bed with Yunho, holding him close all night, but, as the universe seems to be punishing him for saying everything was going alright, he instead fishes out his phone and sends a quick text to Yeosang to meet him for coffee in an hour; he needs an all-nighter. Yeosang isn’t the best pick within the friend group for helping him out with English, but he is the best at pulling an all-nighter (except maybe Hongjoong, but Hongjoong hates helping Mingi so he’s out). 

Yunho reads over Mingi’s texts, and then groans into his shoulder. “An all-nighter? That’s not healthy, Mingi, you’ll be better prepared for your test if you stay home and get rested.”

“I’m really unprepared, and I need a good grade, you know how bad I did on the midterm,” Mingi says. “I’m sorry,” he adds quitely, his chest hurting slightly because disappointing Yunho is absolutely unacceptable. But Yunho wraps his arms around his waist, burying his face in Mingi’s neck from behind. 

“You’ll never disappoint me,” he whispers, and Mingi’s breath hitches because no matter how long he knows Yunho he’ll never get used to that. “I’m just worried, baby.”

“I’ll be fine,” he assures him, his mouth dry. He taps Yunho’s hands on his stomach. “But I should get ready, I need to get going soon.”

“Eat something first!” Yunho insists, untangling himself from Mingi and reaching for a plate that he shoves in front of the younger boy. “I made this for you.”

Mingi eyes the food, and then his boyfriend, whose wide puppy smile must be fake. “I think I’m okay, actually. I wasn’t planning on eating before catching up with Yeosang.”

In a normal situation, Mingi would hate himself for the pout that crosses Yunho’s face. But in his defense, all that is on the plate before him is a hard boiled egg, cut in two, and a pile of potato chips. 

“C’mon,” Yunho protests, “try to be a little healthy if you’re staying up all night.”

“ _That’s_ healthy?” Mingi asks, and Yunho frowns, little crease lines appearing on his forehead. Mingi sighs; it really isn’t fair to him in the slightest, but he reaches for the two halves of egg, stuffs them in his mouth, and pecks Yunho right on his little frown lines between his eyes before going off to get changed. 

When he’s ready to go, Yunho sends him off with a kiss, a cute little peck on the corner of Mingi’s mouth, and a promise that if he wakes him upon his return he’ll be sleeping on _Seonghwa’s_ couch for a month. 

So it’s with semi-high spirits and a rumbling stomach that Mingi heads off to the group’s favorite coffee shop right off campus, a 24 hour place perfect for this type of procrastination.

Mingi likes the bus better at night, cause there are less people, and less people means less judgment when he sticks his arms out to the side and spends the whole ride fighting to maintain his balance. He gets a few weird stares, but he’s having fun, and that’s all that matters. (Yes, he’s only saying that because Hongjoong isn’t there.)

The bus stop that drops him off at campus is literally yards from the coffeeshop, and there’s no one around since no one left the bus with him, so Mingi skips his way there. 

The place is small, so he expects to see Yeosang the second he opens the door, as the boy practically camps out there 24 hours a day. Instead, as he pulls the handle open, he runs right into another person, seemingly frantic and in a hurry. Upon impact, the entire contents of the (scorching hot, Mingi would like to add) coffee cup in his hand are emptied onto Mingi. 

As Mingi sits there, blinking, trying to figure out if he’s suffering from third degree burns, he waits for an apology from the smaller stranger still frozen in the doorway. What he gets instead is a “Holy shit man, can I ask you a huge favor?”

_6 years, 146 days, 22 hours, 37 minutes, 42 seconds_


	2. Chapter 2

_6 years, 146 days, 22 hours, 31 minutes, 14 seconds_

If you asked Mingi what he was doing on a Thursday night, huddled in the bathroom stall of the only 24-hour coffee shop in town, frantically wiping at his completely soaked t-shirt with those flimsy public bathroom paper towels, he’d have to ask the purple-haired stranger beside him, handing him the paper towels, the same question. And so he does.

“We’re cleaning your shirt,” the stranger deadpans. 

“No,” Mingi corrects, scrubbing at a particularly difficult stain, “ _I’m_ cleaning my shirt. Who even are you?”

The stranger’s formerly serious expression fades into a bright smile. “I’m Wooyoung!” he introduces, neglecting his job with the paper towels to offer Mingi his hand instead. Mingi isn’t one to hold grudges, and he already likes the other boy’s kind smile and warm eyes, so, while he ignores the outstretched hand, he does nod in his direction. He can hear Yunho chastising him in his mind (“You really trust people too quickly, Mingi”), but he shakes his head; it’s all a part of his charm anyway. 

When Mingi’s questioning gaze doesn’t go away, the boy -- Wooyoung -- sighs and repeats his earlier request. “I really need a favor,” he says, and his eyes are pleading and desperate. “I could really use your help.”

Mingi stops scrubbing. “But me? Why me? You don’t even know who I am! We’re strangers!”

“What’s your name?”

“Mingi, but that’s not the _point-_ ”

“It’s nice to meet you Mingi! See, we’re not strangers, not anymore,” Wooyoung says, and Mingi blinks at him, trying to unravel that logic. He decides Wooyoung’s not exactly _wrong,_ and is opening his mouth to agree with him when the other boy, who seems to have taken Mingi’s silence as skepticism, gives him an “okay. Okay!” and Mingi leans down to wipe at his shirt again before the Yunho in his mind can tell him he told him so. 

Wooyoung sighs at Mingi scrubbing his shirt, and then takes a step forward towards him, reaching out for the paper towel in his hands. “Take your shirt off.”

Mingi scrambles back after a second of debating whether he’s lost his mind, the tight bathroom not allowing him much space between him and the _crazy person_ in front of him before his back is hitting the wall. “What?” he squeaks, his eyes wide as he stares incredulously at Wooyoung. “I have a boyfriend, I’m not interested, I-”

“Not like that!” Wooyoung says, eyeing Mingi like _he_ just asked him to strip in front of him. He reaches towards his bag he left on the bathroom floor, a big black duffel, and pulls out a t-shirt. “Take your soaking wet shirt off and put this one on.” He scoffs. “Jeez, imagine. No, I’m just looking out for your dumb ass. So you don’t catch a cold. That and the scrubbing is incredibly distracting.” He shoves the shirt in Mingi’s arms and turns around. Mingi can see him still rolling his eyes to the ceiling, even with his back facing him. “See, I’m not looking, I promise. For the _boyfriend._ ” 

Mingi isn’t sure how to react still, but he quickly changes into the shirt, fumbling around a lot as he tries to get it on as fast as possible. When he’s done, he grunts a bit to alert Wooyoung, who turns around, a satisfied smile gracing his features when he looks Mingi up and down. The shirt isn’t too tight on Mingi, but he is quite a bit taller than Wooyoung, and so it hangs an inch or so above the waistband of Mingi’s jeans, but it’s much better than the coffee-stained one that’s in Mingi’s hands. 

“Perfect,” Wooyoung compliments, and pulls the dirty shirt from Mingi’s arms to go and soak it in the sink. “See, this is much better,” he says, finally turning back to the other boy with a look Mingi cannot decipher on his face. 

Mingi is feeling a lot of emotions he can’t begin to understand, and so he just sits there helplessly, waiting for Wooyoung to speak. 

“You look easy to take advantage of,” he blurts out suddenly, and then his eyes widen and he quickly steps in front of the door as if Mingi’s going to attempt to escape. “You look super nice!” he amends, “Really kind, and sweet and helpful, like you might agree to help me.”

Mingi really does consider it, pushing past Wooyoung to leave this godforsaken bathroom and just study for his English test, but he’s got a Yunho in his head and every other experience he’s had with others playing in his brain telling him everything Wooyoung said was right. He sighs. “Okay,” he says, and Wooyoung’s mouth falls open in a way that Mingi can’t decide screams genuine disbelief or “I just won the lottery” and he’s not super sure he wants to find out. “Let me hear the favor.”

“You’re also the first person I ran into after coming up with this idea,” Wooyoung blurts out like he just physically _cannot stop,_ and Mingi actually _does_ consider taking his shirt and leaving this time. Wooyoung shakes his head wildly like it’s going to reverse time, and then takes a step towards Mingi again. 

When he gets closer, he pulls his sleeve up, revealing his bare wrist to Mingi. Mingi jumps back a bit, overtaken by surprise when he sees the soulmark, ticking down slowly, and has to stop himself from averting his eyes. He’s never seen anyone else’s soulmark besides his own and Yunho’s -- it isn’t typically something you just reveal to a random stranger in the middle of a coffee shop bathroom -- and he honestly cannot believe it. 

_6 years, 146 days, 22 hours, 24 minutes, 52 seconds,_ the timer reads, then _51, 50, 49._ He looks at it dumbly with his mouth hanging open slightly, mesmerized by the timer counting, so _slowly,_ it seems. 

“What are you doing?” he spits out finally, tearing his gaze away from the soulmark and looking up at Wooyoung, who is looking sort of wistfully at his bare wrist. 

Wooyoung’s eyes flick up to meet Mingi’s, and there’s something in them -- longing, or is it fondness? Mingi really can’t tell, and it’s making him uncomfortable -- when he pulls his sleeve back down and brings his arms back to his sides. “It’s always been like that, such a ridiculous time,” he explains, and his voice is soft for the first time since Mingi met him. But then his eyes harden, and his voice turns steely. “I want you to help me find him. _Before_ the six years are up. Preferably much earlier.”

Mingi looks at him dumbfounded, like he’s just spoken in a foreign language, and honestly, he’d probably feel less confused right now if he had. “You want me to _what_ now?”

“Find my soulmate!” Wooyoung says with a level of excitement Mingi isn’t sure is fitting for this situation. “C’mon, I really need someone’s help tracking him down. I can’t possibly wait six years, I mean can you imagine? All my friends have either found theirs or are close to it. Half my life will be over by then! You must understand, what does your soulmark say?” He reaches for Mingi’s wrist, and Mingi yanks it away immediately. 

“I already have my soulmate,” he admits, holding his wrist close to his chest, uncomfortable with anyone but Yunho seeing it. “Yunho. My boyfriend.”

Wooyoung looks at him then, his eyes so full of emotion, like they’re simultaneously lighting up but also like something is dying inside, and Mingi feels his heart ache in the slightest, and feels himself itching to reach out for the boy, to comfort him in any way. “You have a soulmate?” he breathes, a level of wonder and excitement in the way he speaks. 

Mingi thinks it’s crazy, and the Yunho in his brain has already given up, but with that look in Wooyoung’s eyes, his energy, his impatience, his anticipation, he can’t help but think of the real Yunho and the baby Mingi with the bow tie and he hears himself agreeing before he can even work it through in his brain. 

Wooyoung screeches before he can get half of his words out, and begins jumping up and down very obnoxiously, which would be kind of endearing if it weren’t for the fact that he had spent the past few minutes checking Mingi’s soaking shirt, and was now effectively covering Mingi in water. Mingi once again considers leaving, but then the Wooyoung throws himself at him, hugging him tightly, and Mingi was always weak for hugs, so he pats the small purple boy on the head, already fond of him. 

Wooyoung pulls back, excitement evident in his eyes, and uses his grip on Mingi’s arms to shake him back and forth. Mingi, just along for the ride at this point, lets him, and waits for him to calm down on his own. 

“So when do we start?” Wooyoung asks through a big grin, and Mingi sighs at the boy’s energy. On any other day, he’d be jumping with him, just for an excuse to be happy and jumping, but today, he’s got a test and it’s really late and he really needs to study. 

“Can we wait until tomorrow?” Mingi asks. “You go to school here? Can we meet in the library?”

“Tomorrow?!” Wooyoung exclaims, but then at the look on Mingi’s face, he clears his throat and adds, “Yeah, yeah, tomorrow is fine, I’ll meet you at two.”

Satisfied, Mingi pries the smaller boy’s hands off his arms, and reaches for his shirt in the sink. Grabbing a ridiculous amount of paper towels, he covers the shirt and then shoves it in his backpack. Turning to Wooyoung, who is still blocking the door, he grunts a bit, pointing behind him. “If you don’t mind…”

“Oh!” Wooyoung says, stepping away, and then moving forward again to place his hand on the knob. “Actually, I should go home too, it’s getting late.” The boy smiles again at Mingi, a bit more awkward than before, and then opens the door. “Goodnight, Mingi. I’ll see you tomorrow!”

He’s out of sight before Mingi can realize he never thanked him. 

Mingi stumbles out of the bathroom feeling a bit like he’s a dream, and makes his way over to Yeosang’s table in the corner, where, sure enough, the boy is waiting for him, barely raising his eyes from his book when Mingi sits down. 

He doesn’t ask what Mingi was doing in a single bathroom with a stranger, but he does give him a “What was that?” before he can even settle himself in the seat. 

“I’m not sure,” Mingi says, and then focuses on pulling his books out of his bag. 

They study most of the night (or Mingi studies and Yeosang snaps at him for getting distracted every five minutes), but Mingi leaves the coffee shop feeling like he retained nothing from his English studying. All that keeps flashing in his brain is the ticking clock of Wooyoung’s timer, counting down ever so slowly. 

When Mingi arrives home, it’s nearly five in the morning, and so as to avoid Yunho’s wrath, he quietly tiptoes into their bedroom, and climbs into bed with Yunho fully clothed. He doesn’t want to jostle him too much, but sleeping Yunho looks too warm and cuddly, and so Mingi carefully wraps his arms around him from behind, snuggling into him and burying his face into the back of his neck. Yunho doesn’t wake (thankfully), but his body seems to melt into Mingi’s unconsciously, and Mingi sighs into him. 

He isn’t expecting to get much sleep, but he closes his eyes momentarily, and the next thing he knows, there’s something poking his nose. 

He blinks his eyes open to Yunho grinning at him, and scrunches his nose up at the finger Yunho is using to poke at it. Yunho giggles, and Mingi’s eyes fly to his face, which carries one of the softest expressions Mingi’s ever seen. His heart bursts and he’s suddenly more awake than he should be after getting just a couple of hours of sleep, but he lets the energy pull him up from the bed, seeking out Yunho’s hands as he slides off the mattress.

He kisses Yunho when they both get to their feet, and mumbles a “goodmorning” against his lips. Yunho smiles against him, pulling him closer and resting his head in the crook of Mingi’s neck. 

“I missed you last night,” he says, inhaling deeply into Mingi’s shirt, which Mingi realizes, too late, is not his own. Yunho steps back suddenly, taking in the rest of Mingi -- fully clothed in jeans and a t-shirt two sizes too small -- and then raising his eyebrows. “What happened to you? Whose shirt is that?”

Mingi sighs, and wraps an arm around Yunho’s shoulder’s, leading him into the bathroom. “That is a long story.” He kisses the top of Yunho’s head (he has to stand on his tiptoes), and then whispers, “I missed you too.”

Mingi tells Yunho everything while they’re getting ready, from the coffee stains to the ticking soulmarks, and Yunho is silent through it all. That is, of course, until Mingi mentions Wooyoung’s little favor, and Yunho nearly spits out his toothpaste. 

“That’s impossible,” he says immediately, and Mingi finds himself nodding around his toothbrush.

“I know, I know,” he says, shaking his head. “But Yunho, you don’t understand, you had to see his face -- it was like a baby’s and his little pout and big sad eyes,” Mingi whines, “It was impossible to say no.”

Yunho laughs at him then, ruffling his hair and calling him cute. 

“I am _not_ cute,” Mingi says with a pout. 

“You are _so_ cute,” Yunho says, and pinches his cheek. After a little argument and a lot of Yunho tickling and babying Mingi, it’s safe to say Mingi ended up with most of the toothpaste this morning.

Mingi fails his English test that morning -- okay he probably doesn’t _fail_ , but he does struggle through it. He’s completely drained, from a lack of sleep and the difficult exam, but he finds a little bit of excitement in him when he makes his way from the dining hall to the library to meet Wooyoung. 

He’s pumped and ready for some research (his professors would be so proud) and eager to form a plan, but when he finds Wooyoung and asks him where they should start, the purple-haired boy just stares blankly at him before sighing, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“You dumb bitch,” is the first thing he says to him, and Mingi blinks back at him in surprise. “You didn’t think I had a plan?” Wooyoung asks, looking slightly offended. “Who do you think I am, asking you to help me with this and not having any clue what I’m doing?”

Mingi feels a pout coming on, but he suppresses it as he remembers his little argument with Yunho this morning, and just blinks at Wooyoung again. “I’m sorry, Woo,” he says, the nickname just slipping out because Mingi is like this with all his friends (and yes he met Wooyoung yesterday but they’re definitely friends), “but you picked me to help you simply because you happened to spill coffee on me last night. Forgive me if I _didn’t_ think you had a plan.”

Wooyoung huffs, and Mingi can tell he’s one of those people who, when they’re playing Monopoly, always ends up flipping the board when he gets bankrupted. (Mingi has an eye for these things, he plays games with four other people like Wooyoung. Including himself). 

“I was planning on borrowing my roommate’s car,” Wooyoung explains. He rolls his eyes. “Changbin couldn’t be bothered to come with, and so he lent me his car like it’ll suddenly make everything better,” he complains. “I was planning on driving around, seeing if I can get my timer to change at all.” He shrugs. “I was hoping getting closer to him would make something happen.”

“Them,” Mingi corrects, and Wooyoung actually stops talking to turn and look at Mingi like he's suddenly grown a second head. 

"I'm sorry, _what?_ " he asks, eyebrows raised and his hands even on his hips. Mingi stands back because the level of sass can physically be _felt_ in the air. 

"Them," he repeats. "You said ‘him,’ but you don't know your soulmate's gender, do you?"

Wooyoung opens his mouth, likely to argue, and then shuts it again. "I suppose not, I just-"

"So we shouldn't call them ‘him,’ then, should we? If it's not necessarily a ‘him’?"

Wooyoung looks extremely dangerous as he looks at Mingi now, but without a legitimate argument, he concedes with an "I suppose," that sounds like he's choosing his words very carefully. 

Mingi swallows, a little scared, but decides to continue the conversation. "Anyways, _they_ could be anywhere, where should we look?"

“I thought today we could make a circle around the city,” he says. “See where to go from there.”

Mingi frowns. “And why did you need me again? If it’s just driving? Can’t you just drive yourself?”

Mingi thinks this one might be worse than the “them” thing, as Wooyoung gets so offended he literally walks away, storming out of the library like he’s a ten year old throwing a tantrum. Mingi hopes he’s at least leading him in the general direction of this “Changbin” or his car, and jogs to catch up.

When they make it to the parking lot, Mingi is brimming with an excitement he’s never really felt before. The whole day, he had been anticipating coming up with a plan, spending forever trying to achieve an impossible goal, but Wooyoung has a plan, and they are following it _now_. 

His excitement carries him all the way to the parked car, a crappy Hyundai that looks like it’s older than the both of them, and then he spots Wooyoung cramming into the passenger’s seat, and as he eyes his empty driver’s seat, reality hits. 

“I’m not allowed to drive,” he says out loud, frozen outside the car door. 

When he hesitates too long, Wooyoung rolls down the window, giving him a weird look. “Get in, loser, what’s taking you so long?”

Mingi swallows, and an image of Yunho flashes in his mind. “I’m not allowed to drive,” he repeats, louder this time, and winces at the dangerous look in Wooyoung’s eyes. 

“You agreed to help me,” Wooyoung says, teeth clenched, “and literally _all_ I need help with is driving. You’re not _allowed_ to drive, or you _can’t_ drive? There’s a difference,” he clarifies, “and it’s going to decide whether or not I need to go find a new sidekick.”

Mingi perks up at the word sidekick, and he tries his hardest not to let the happiness show on his face. He knows he fails when Wooyoung flashes him a satisfied smirk, and leans over to open the car door for him. 

He climbs in, but he freezes again at the wheel, Yunho’s voice again replaying in his head. “Yunho says I can’t drive,” he tells Wooyoung, and he takes a deep breath before turning the key. “I don’t really agree, but I don’t like going against him, it feels wrong.” He winces again at the sound of the engine, but he reminds himself that Yunho could never stay mad at him. It doesn’t ease his conscience as much as he hoped it would, but it’s enough for him to put the car in reverse and start exiting the parking lot. 

“Yunho is your soulmate?” Wooyoung clarifies, his voice strangely soft and calm, and Mingi nods in response. “What’s he like?”

Mingi smiles, barely registering as the car leaves the parking lot (which is good for his conscience but not so much for their safety, when they nearly slam into the back of a stopped car on the main road), thinking of Yunho. “I can’t even explain,” he tells Wooyoung. “You’ll understand one day,” he says, referring to the smaller boy’s wrist, which Wooyoung is gazing at absentmindedly. 

Mingi sees a small smile before he turns his gaze back to the road (the light he’s sitting at is green, and he thanks all the stars that there’s no one behind him). But when Wooyoung speaks, he’s back to his normal self, any signs of vulnerability missing from his playful tone. 

“He sounds controlling,” Wooyoung teases, and Mingi just laughs.

“He cares about me,” he corrects, dutifully checking his blind spot before changing lanes to get on the highway. “We’ve had too many close calls at this point.”

“Close calls?” Wooyoung says, and Mingi resists the urge to look at him, though he’s sure he’ll find a pair of wide eyes staring back. “Close calls how exactly?” There’s panic rising in Wooyoung’s voice, but Mingi just laughs him off, focusing on merging onto the busy road. “I asked you to help me, not _kill_ me. I can’t die before I meet my soulmate!”

“You’re not going to die,” Mingi says. “I’m an excellent driver.” He nods proudly when they make it onto the highway successfully. “See! Now calm down, please. Put on some music or something.”

Wooyoung sighs, slouching lower in his seat. He pulls out his phone nonetheless, and connects it to the AUX Mingi hadn’t been expecting in such an old, rundown car. 

He cues up a playlist of sorts, and the first song to come on is War of Hormone. 

Mingi actually turns to Wooyoung this time, and the smaller boy has to yell and shove at the side of his face before he remembers to keep his eyes on the road. “BTS?” he asks, once they are safely driving straight again. “Really?”

Wooyoung huffs. “BTS is an extremely talented, successful, worldwide sensation that produces endless genres of amazing music, and if you can’t respect that, then you’re wrong,” he says, and that’s that. They listen to BTS. They both do choreo for Idol, and Mingi has to remember that he’s operating a moving vehicle and to keep both his hands on the wheel. 

They fight over a particularly close call (it’s Wooyoung’s fault for bringing TWICE into the mix), and Wooyoung turns the volume all the way down. 

“So,” says Mingi, unable to function in complete silence. “What exactly are we hoping happens today?”

Wooyoung sits up, a new sort of energy filling the car, and Mingi straightens himself, focusing on the road. “Well I was sort of hoping my timer could lead us there.”

“Lead us?”

“Like it could show us how close we are to him! Like a compass!”

Mingi thinks for a second. Now he knows he’s not the smartest, but that doesn’t sound right. 

“Do compasses show how close you are to something?” he asks, and he can feel Wooyoung’s glare yet again. It’s becoming a pattern, and Mingi doesn’t like how used to it he is already. It’s unsettling. 

“Whatever,” Wooyoung says, and then pulls up his sleeve again. “Maybe the timer will jump down if we get close to him.”

“Them.”

“Don’t you think _I_ of all people should know the gender of my soulmate?” Wooyoung snaps, and then his energy shifts instantly. “I feel like he can’t be _too_ far, and getting closer will increase our chances of finding him, therefore lower the time it takes!”

Mingi thinks it through for a second, and then nods, agreeing. It doesn’t seem like a terrible plan. Better than just driving aimlessly, which is what he feels like he’s doing now. “So you’ll tell me if it changes? What do we do then?”

Wooyoung beams. “We find him! He’ll be close then, I’m sure we’ll figure it out!”

“And you’re sure the timer works like a compass?” Mingi asks, tilting his head to look at Wooyoung for a brief moment ( _brief_ , he’s being safe). He frowns for a split second, before his face returns to its usual cheer and he grins again. 

“Yeah, I’m sure. It must, it makes total sense.”

Mingi is silent then, because he’s not sure the younger boy is right, but he’s already here and he’s already excited and he’s not going to stop because Wooyoung’s logic was a little off. It was definitely worth a shot. 

“You don’t believe me,” Wooyoung says immediately, and it’s so certain Mingi doesn’t even know how to argue, other than opening and closing his mouth for an unnecessarily long amount of time as he panics in his seat. Wooyoung frowns then, and Mingi doesn’t like the look of it on his usually happy face. With his little pout and sad eyes, Mingi remembers why he agreed to help Wooyoung in the first place, and his heart breaks a little seeing the boy’s face reflect any ounce of defeat. 

“No!” he protests, a pout forming on his face.

“You can’t _not_ believe me!” Wooyoung argues, his voice high pitched and whiny. “It’s not gonna work!”

“It’s not gonna _work_?” Mingi asks. 

“How could it work if you’re sitting here being so negative about it?” Wooyoung’s arms are crossed in front of his chest, and Mingi remembers literal _minutes_ earlier when they were dancing to BTS. 

“My negative attitude is going to have an effect on the legitimacy of your soulmate theory?” Mingi deadpans, and then his hard expression breaks instantly and he erupts in a set of giggles. “That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

“It is!” Wooyoung protests, but he’s laughing too, and his smile is stretching across his whole face, and when they laugh together, it’s so loud Mingi’s sure they’d hear it over the BTS if it were still playing. 

“I believe you,” Mingi says, when the laughter finally dies down, and he’s serious this time, because he wants to help Wooyoung, he really does, and a positive attitude is something he’s always been good at contributing. “We’ll find _them_.”

Wooyoung smiles back, and they actually sit in silence for once, Mingi taking a detour to get them on a new highway, heading West back across the city. 

With both of them too hyperactive for their own goods, the silence lasts approximately four minutes before they’re talking again, loudly and obnoxiously. 

Mingi finds out he and Wooyoung are _very_ similar. Scarily similar. He hears his own laugh in Wooyoung’s, and neither of them have anyone to worry about deafening when they get into a screaming conversation about mint chocolate chip ice cream (just _how_ do Seonghwa and Hongjoong hate it so much? Wooyoung agrees). 

“Are you sure you’re checking your timer?” Mingi asks after they’ve been driving for nearly two hours. “No changes?”

Wooyoung doesn’t spare a glance when he mutters a “no,” going back to staring at the window (at what, Mingi will never know, the endless fields around them pretty boring in his mind). 

Trying not to get irritated at his nonchalance, especially after they’ve been driving so long, Mingi takes a deep breath. “Are you sure?” he asks carefully. 

“Yes, I’m sure, Mingi, it’s still the same time, look.” A bare wrist flashes in front of Mingi’s face, and he catches a _6 years_ before it’s pulled away.

“But the more specific times?” Mingi clarifies. “It hasn’t skipped a few minutes, or an hour or so?”

“It has _not_ ,” Wooyoung says firmly, “but even if it _had_ , it wouldn’t matter, since it would still be six years in the fucking future.”

Mingi is silent after that one, but he did find Wooyoung’s answer a bit harsh. “It could matter, a little,” he adds weakly, and Wooyoung scoffs. (He’s very good at scoffing).

Wooyoung breaks the next long silence, this time with a question for Mingi. “When did you meet Yunho?”

The sudden personal question is a little startling -- Mingi likes Wooyoung and he would say they’ve gotten pretty close since agreeing to help with the younger’s strange request, but they have kept most of their conversations light. Light like Wooyoung, light like Mingi. Happy and carefree and never serious. He wonders what brought the change, and then catches another glimpse of Wooyoung’s ticking timer. The younger boy is staring at it, and not even trying to hide the wistful expression on his face. 

“I met Yunho in high school. We were freshmen,” Mingi admits, watching Wooyoung carefully. He doesn’t look up from the timer, but a smile of sorts crosses his face, and Mingi wonders who the smile is really for. 

“You’ve known him so long,” Wooyoung breathes. “That sounds wonderful.”

“It is,” he says. 

Wooyoung sighs, and then looks back out the window. 

“Why aren’t you waiting?” Mingi asks without thinking, and Wooyoung’s head snaps back to face him. 

“Waiting?’

“Waiting for him. I promise you the wait is worth it,” Mingi assures him. “I don’t even remember my life before Yunho, it was so…” He trails off when he realizes what he was about to say. _Insignificant_. The word hangs unsaid between them, and Mingi feels horrible. But when he chances a glance at Wooyoung, the boy looks like he knows it. 

“It’s okay,” he assures him, a wry smile on his face. “Meaningless? Insignificant? Yeah.” He sighs again. “I can definitely understand _that_.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Yes, you did,” Wooyoung interrupts. “And you’re right. Trust me, I’ve heard it all before -- ‘just wait,’ ‘it’ll be worth it,’ ‘this won’t matter when you find them.’ They’re all people like you who have found their soulmates already. And yeah, you’re probably right. You’re definitely right. It’s insignificant, meaningless, empty. What does that say for my life now? Who does that make me, for the next six years, when I focus on building a life for myself?”

Seonghwa comes to mind then, in the strangest way, when Mingi thinks of how he lived his whole life thinking his soulmate was missing from him. That he would _never_ get this, and he thinks it’s almost easier, coming to terms with it, putting the pieces back together with the life you make for yourself, than hopelessly waiting for someone to come and turn your whole life upside down. In the most beautiful, amazingly perfect way. But upside down, nonetheless. How do you create a life that means nothing, when there’s someone out there who means everything?

He thinks he understands Wooyoung a lot more then, and though he leaves his question unanswered, he does reach a hand across the seat to grip Wooyoung’s, feeling the younger’s relax into his grip as he brings it closer to his chest. 

They drive for hours, until it gets dark and they still have no luck with Wooyoung’s timer. They begin to head home, their big circle around the city nearly complete, and both promise to make a bigger circle around the city the next day. 

“It would be so much easier if we could just time travel,” Mingi suggests, and then bursts out laughing. Wooyoung cackles at the suggestion, both a little drunk on the night and ridiculously slap happy after a long and exhausting day in the car. 

“Time travel,” Wooyoung repeats, yawning. “You know who would be able to help us with something like that? Yeosangie. I feel like he knows about time traveling.”

Mingi looks at him in shock. “Yeosang...ie? Like as in Yeosang? Like as in you know Yeosang?”

Wooyoung laughs, a completely inappropriate reaction to Mingi’s legitimate question. “Of course I do, we’ve been friends since freshman year, we were on the same floor in our freshman dorms. He’s never mentioned me?”

“Never,” Mingi says seriously, and then bursts out laughing at the implication. “I’ve known Yeosang since middle school, how have we never met before?”

Apparently, Mingi should be a stand-up comedian, because they’re both giggling in fits now, and they’re heading in the wrong direction to campus. 

“But he would know about time travel, wouldn’t he?” Wooyoung asks when they’ve calmed down. 

“He _would_ ,” Mingi gasps, “We should totally go find him.”

So that’s how they find themselves skipping towards the 24-hour coffee shop, the fateful place where they had met less than a day ago now, trying to find their good old mutual friend Yeosang _ie_. 

Mingi is sure there’s a little part of him that knows that the concept of time travel is completely ridiculous, especially in their current situation, but he also knows he hasn’t had this much fun, prancing around with Wooyoung like a lunatic through campus, in a very long time, and so he runs with it, quite literally, making it across the majority of campus in a few short minutes. 

They’re nearly to the coffee shop when Mingi hears it, and he’s grateful that Wooyoung had stopped his singing literally moments before, because it’s so quiet he would’ve missed it otherwise. 

“Jongho,” the voice breathes, and Mingi spins to his left, a small alley just outside the back exit. 

He grabs Wooyoung wrist, and makes a move to cover his mouth (“Hey! What are you doing? Get off of--”) but Wooyoung sees it and it shuts him up instantly. 

The couple hasn’t seen them yet, but they’re not being incredibly subtle themselves -- Yeosang (or so Mingi assumes based on the voice) pressed against the brick siding, Jongho trapping him there, his hand holding up Yeosang’s thigh, which is wrapped around his waist. Their lips are sliding against one another in a way that is _definitely_ not platonic, and Mingi has to cover his mouth before he exposes them with a loud chuckle. 

What breaks the new soulmates apart is actually Wooyoung (surprising), who gives them three seconds to themselves before he screeches “Yeosang!” at them, and Mingi has to say watching them jump apart like they’ve been struck by lightning _is_ pretty entertaining. 

Yeosang’s eyes are wide, and they’re a bit dazed under the streetlight as they travel back and forth between Mingi and Wooyoung in surprise. “Woo?” he says, and his voice is raspy and weak. 

“I told you,” Wooyoung says cheerfully, sauntering up to them like he isn’t interrupting and like everything’s normal. Mingi would believe it, with Wooyoung’s nonchalance, if it weren’t for the way Jongho looked like a deer caught in the headlights at every sudden movement. “Mingi agreed to help me out!”

Yeosang swallows, and then looks back at Mingi, who smirks at his reddened ears. “We were just coming to ask you a quick question, that’s all.”

“Time travel,” Wooyoung says, finally breaching the personal bubble and putting his arm around Yeosang. “As far as solutions go, what do you think?”

Something hardens in Yeosang’s face, and he’s suddenly the stony best friend Mingi’s known since childhood. “You guys are dumbasses.”

Mingi and Wooyoung leave satisfied, though their little time travel idea went nowhere. While the image of Jongho pressing Yeosang against that wall makes Mingi kind of want to wash his eyes with bleach, it’s a valuable piece of information he will be using later. Cue millions of evil laughs shared between Mingi and Wooyoung on their way back to campus. 

~

Mingi’s up bright and early the next morning, and Yunho gives him an incredulous look when he hovers over him in bed, fully dressed as he offers him a kiss goodbye. 

“Goodbye?” Yunho mumbles, and he’s not fully awake yet because his words are slurred and followed by a tired groan. “Isn’t it a Saturday?”

Mingi hums his affirmation into their second kiss. “I have to go out with Woo again, the soulmate search is still on.” He grins when Yunho’s eyes open a bit wider and the boy looks at him, soft as ever so early in the morning, and with a fondness that has Mingi’s heart doing cartwheels in his chest. 

“You got home late last night,” Yunho grumbles, pulling Mingi closer by the front of his shirt. Mingi starts to protest, losing his balance standing over the side of the bed, but at Yunho’s pout he caves in, letting the older boy pull him back into bed and on top of him. Yunho’s hand runs through Mingi’s hair, bringing his face up and closer to his, and Mingi shifts up to hover over him. “How was yesterday? How are things going?”

Mingi grins again, feeling a little giddy so close to Yunho. “It was good, no progress so far, but I’m driving him a little further today, we’re going to see if that works at all.”

“You’re driving?” Yunho asks, looking at Mingi curiously. Mingi bumps their noses together reassuringly, and Yunho sighs, but doesn’t say anything. “Good luck today, _please_ be safe.” His last words are a warning, and Mingi knows better than to ignore it, but he smiles even wider at his boyfriend’s support and pecks his lips again softly. 

As much as the warm arms of Yunho around him feel like heaven and Mingi wants nothing more than to snuggle in and stay in bed forever, he knows Wooyoung is waiting, and so he picks himself up carefully, ruffling Yunho’s messy bedhead and giving him another kiss on the forehead before he climbs off the bed. 

“Don’t forget,” Yunho warns, already turning over and burying his face in the pillow, “we have movie night tonight. Invite Wooyoung, maybe he’d get along with the others too, and I wanna meet him, he sounds sweet.”

Mingi smiles at his already asleep soulmate, already counting down the hours until movie night where he’ll see him again. 

Mingi brings up movie night right when he sees Wooyoung -- perched on the hood of Changbin’s car, waiting for him. 

“You’re late,” Wooyoung says, crossing his arms, “and if you think you can get out of trouble by bribing me with a movie night invitation…” Mingi feels sheepish, and Wooyoung smirks. “You’re absolutely right. I will definitely be coming to your movie night.”

There’s something like pride on Wooyoung’s face that he tries to hide as he climbs into the car, but Mingi’s heart swells as the corners of his mouth turn up in a quiet little smile. 

The drive is smoother this time, and they make it much further in a shorter time (“Are you _sure_ you’re checking close enough?” “Are you _sure_ you graduated kindergarten? It _says_ fucking six years, dumbass!”). Still without much luck, but in much higher spirits, they call it quits a little bit early to get ready for their evening plans, and split early afternoon in the campus student parking lot. 

When Mingi returns to his apartment, he becomes aware that he has left his keys at home, in the locked apartment that Yunho has yet to return to, and he _would_ be stressed out if losing his keys wasn’t basically second nature by now. And so he huffs a sigh before making his way over to Seonghwa’s door, knowing the older boy always has an available couch and sometimes even a snack for Mingi whenever he gets locked out. 

But when Mingi knocks on the door, he comes face to face with someone who is definitely not Seonghwa (he has to adjust his gaze to peer down at the short intruder). Hongjoong answering the door isn’t necessarily bad, but the oversized shirt and boxers he’s wearing, which are definitely not his own, are, and so is the fresh sweat on his forehead and his raspy voice when he asks Mingi what’s up, leaning on the propped open door for support. 

“I’ll just wait in the hallway,” Mingi chokes out, pointing down the hall, but Hongjoong rolls his eyes, stepping back to let Mingi into the apartment. 

“That’s completely unnecessary, let me assure you,” Hongjoong smirks, and Mingi vomits a bit in his mouth. “Come inside, you forgot your keys again?”

Mingi nods, and follows him inside, not wanting any more details, and hoping that listening to Hongjoong will shut him up. 

The couch must be safe, so he sets up camp there, pulling out his phone while Hongjoong leaves to go change, leaving him alone in the living room. Seonghwa comes out a few moments later, his hair wet and freshly combed from a shower, and his face brightens up when he finds Mingi. 

“Are you crashing here until movie night?” he asks, already making his way to the kitchen before Mingi can even ask for something. Seonghwa has been like that a lot lately, his smiles wide and face bright, something reflected in his eyes that Mingi had never noticed was missing before. 

He wants to make fun of him for Hongjoong’s appearance, he desperately wants to share at least _one_ of the twelve sex jokes he’s come up with (totally not including the “Seonghwa and Hongjoong, sitting in a tree, F-U-C-....”), but he can understand Seonghwa’s shift in mood, and he doesn’t want to ruin it, and so he lets it slide this time, making his way to the kitchen island to keep the older boy company while he cooks. 

“I’m bringing you a friend tonight,” he says instead, smirking, “I just know you’re going to love him.”

“Oh no.” Seonghwa raises his eyebrows. Mingi just giggles.

~

Movie night is full of extra chaos now that Mingi has a new loud friend to torment Seonghwa even further with. But everyone loves Wooyoung right away, like Mingi knew they would, and they fall into their family dynamic almost instantly, taking up every available seat in Seonghwa’s living room like they own the place. 

Yunho and Mingi get the tiny chair in the corner (Hongjoong nearly has an aneurysm), and Mingi thinks heaven can’t exist because no place can be better than Yunho’s embrace, and he finds no shame (despite Hongjoong’s complaints) in snuggling into his boyfriend, holding him as tight as he can. Jongho and Yeosang share a couch with Wooyoung -- Yeosang has been exposed as Wooyoung’s close friend, and despite his grumbling and whining about Wooyoung “blowing his cover,” Mingi watches him accept Wooyoung’s arm around his shoulders halfway through the movie without a single complaint. Seonghwa and Hongjoong are on the loveseat, and Mingi thinks Hongjoong talks some big game for someone who spends 90% of the movie watching Seonghwa’s face, their hands tightly grasped in the younger boy’s lap. 

After the movie, the two oldest stand up, hands still grasped tightly, like they have some big announcement. Everyone stares at them expectantly, frozen in their seats, including Wooyoung, who is already acting like he’s the couple’s bratty youngest child. 

“We’d like to share something with the rest of you guys,” Seonghwa says, and he’s smiling so brightly that Mingi's chest, which had initially tightened a bit with worry, loosens immediately. 

He turns to Yunho, who is nodding encouragingly at the pair, and a soft smile crosses his face before he looks back at the older two, awaiting their announcement. 

“We’ve moved in together,” Hongjoong deadpans, and Wooyoung literally gasps out loud in response. 

Mingi and Yunho just burst into synchronized laughter, and Seonghwa looks at them, his eyes wide and questioning. 

“I’m sorry,” Yunho manages to get out between laughter, and then he’s lost again when Yeosang snorts in his seat too, and suddenly everyone’s laughing, Hongjoong and Seonghwa standing confused looking at all of them. 

“Did you think we’d be surprised?” Jongho asks, giggling a bit himself. 

“No, no, it’s okay,” Yunho says, calming down the earliest. “Here,” he says to Seonghwa, who looks a bit like a kicked puppy, “It’s like you’re coming out to us. Like, we been knew, but also, we’re super proud of you, right guys?”

Mingi snorts. “Right. Super proud. Not surprised. We been knew.”

“We been knew,” Yeosang and Jongho repeat, nodding.

“We been knew,” Wooyoung says, just because he can’t help himself. 

Seonghwa stands there blinking still, but Hongjoong nods, pulling his dazed boyfriend away from the center of the room and towards the kitchen. “Right. So what do you guys think about ordering some dessert?”

~

“Okay, so I’ve got it,” Mingi says first thing Sunday morning, sliding into the driver’s seat of Changbin’s car next to Wooyoung, who raises his eyebrows. 

“Good morning to you too?”

“No, listen,” Mingi waves his hands, and Wooyoung finally looks at him like he’s taking him seriously. “It’s all about chance, isn’t it? We’re driving around to random places to raise our chances of getting close to them, right? But are we really increasing our chances of meeting your soulmate, when we’re not meeting anyone?”

Wooyoung’s eyes go wide. “We have to approach people.”

“Exactly,” Mingi says, grinning proudly at his excellent idea. “We go more places, we see more people, we have a higher chance of meeting your soulmate, the timer goes down!” Mingi is confident in his logic, and he’s happy to see Wooyoung nodding along like he agrees. 

“Okay, let’s go meet some people.”

It’s easier said than done, and after the third rest stop, Mingi kind of wishes he had kept his mouth shut. 

“That’s it, I’m turning around,” he says, climbing back into the car after meeting all of the occupants of a little diner and gas station combo. 

Wooyoung glares from his seat, but pulls a tube of hand sanitizer out of his bag and offers some to Mingi. “We’re not turning around.”

“My hand is _slimy_ ,” Mingi cries, but he accepts the hand sanitizer and hops back on the highway in the right direction. Sometimes he curses himself for being such a kind and caring person. But then he sees Wooyoung try to hide a smile, and he decides he’s doing it all for a reason. 

“We’ll soldier on!” Wooyoung yells, and Mingi grins. 

“Next stop: Wooyoung’s soulmate!”

But Wooyoung’s soulmate isn’t at the next stop, or the one after that, and talking to people is much more exhausting than driving around aimlessly, so they call it quits early again to head home. This time, they’re certain the next step is applying their new theory to their own campus, and make plans to skip classes Monday to hit all of the academic buildings as they’re letting students out. 

When they make it to the parking lot, Mingi turns off the car, but Wooyoung doesn’t move, his seatbelt still locked as he stares straight ahead, vibrating a little in his seat. 

“Thank you for doing this,” he says finally, and turns to look at Mingi. His eyes are genuine, no jokes in them, and Mingi smiles, reaching a hand to pat the top of his head. 

“Of course,” is all he says, and it’s all he needs to say, because Wooyoung leans into his touch and smiles like a puppy getting praised. 

He’s still happy and smiling even when they part, near the bus station he walks Mingi to, but Mingi notices the way he runs a hand through his hair tiredly, his shoulders tense. Mingi opens his mouth to ask if he’s okay, but Wooyoung turns to him with a grin and a short wave. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asks, eyebrows raised, and Mingi closes his mouth, nodding. There’s something that flashes in Wooyoung’s eyes before he turns to leave, frustration or sadness, or something else entirely, and Mingi is reminded of the way Seonghwa has changed since Hongjoong and the brightness in his eyes. He wonders if Wooyoung is just missing that brightness, and he vows to work extra hard the next day to help the younger boy out. 

It is a bit frustrating, Mingi thinks to himself as he heads home, that they haven’t made any progress yet. How is Wooyoung feeling after three days of searching, of no leads, no changes? While Mingi himself has grown attached to the smaller boy and his epic search, it is _his_ soulmate they’re talking about, _his_ soulmate he’s missing, _his_ life that’s waiting to begin. It’s understandable he’s a little upset, and Mingi curses himself for not noticing it earlier. 

He can’t even begin to imagine how Wooyoung feels each night they go home after another failure; while he has Yunho to come home to, warmth and love and everything home, Wooyoung goes to Changbin’s where he’s inevitably alone, and to what? Fall asleep cold and in the dark? The thought makes Mingi shiver, thoughts of a bed without Yunho making his heart pang for Wooyoung. 

When he walks in the door to his apartment, there must be something reflected on his face, because Yunho comes to him immediately, wrapping his arms around him and pulling his head to his chest. 

Mingi cries, and Yunho spends his time soothing his back and ushering him over to the couch to sit down. “Shh,” he coos. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

But when Yunho tries to pull away to look at him, Mingi pulls him by his shirt, climbing even closer to him on the couch. “Don’t go,” he says, voice cracking, and Yunho relents, sighing into the top of Mingi’s head. 

When he calms down enough to speak, he talks into Yunho’s neck, not willing to give up any of the older’s warmth. “We had no luck with Wooyoung’s soulmate today,” he says, and Yunho hums into his shoulder, rubbing his hand comfortingly up and down his back. “I was thinking about Wooyoung, waiting for his soulmate, and I just…” he breathes in shakily. “I just thought about how it would be if we hadn’t met yet, and I got scared.”

Yunho doesn’t force him to look at him, instead, he pulls him closer, to sit on his lap, and he noses his ear. “I’m right here,” he whispers, and Mingi nods into him, pressing his lips to his neck softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Yunho only leaves Mingi once that night, to bring him dinner (a plate of snacks and chocolates) in their bed, and then he holds him tight the rest of the night, which they spend pressing kisses and whispered promises into soft skin. 

Mingi drifts to sleep amid warmth and comfort, and yet he can’t help but think of Wooyoung, cold and alone. 

He doesn't wake to the soft touch of Yunho's nose nudging his own, as nice as that sounds, or even to the sound of their alarm clock on the bedside table. Instead, his phone's ringtone starts blaring, and as he fumbles to get it (the clock just behind his phone projecting a red 6:35, a full hour before his alarm), Yunho groans behind him, shifting out of his grasp to bury his head in the pillow on the other side of the bed. 

"Hello?" he nearly growls into the phone, but he's not even sure if the caller heard at all, as he's bombarded immediately by an ungodly screech. "Wooyoung?" he asks, sitting up in his seat. "Is that you?"

"Do you have other friends that screech at you in the early morning?" Wooyoung's voice comes through the phone, far too joyful for so early in the morning. Mingi scoffs. "We're late already, first chem lecture starts at 7:15. Get off your ass and get over here, I'm already outside the science building."

Mingi blinks as the boy hangs up, his phone still frozen to his ear. 

But he’s not one to disappoint Wooyoung (frankly, he’s afraid to), so he rolls over to climb on Yunho and poke at his face. 

“Yunho, baby, sweet sunshine,” he coos, and Yunho groans beneath him, his eyes fluttering open to pout at Mingi. “I have to leave,” he says, and Yunho’s pout grows, Mingi leaning down to kiss it away. 

“Leave? But it’s so early,” Yunho protests, the kiss doing nothing to rid him of his puppy dog eyes and matching pout. “Does that mean we’re not getting ready for classes together?” His face falls, and Mingi feels a sharp pain in his chest. 

He leans down to capture Yunho’s lips with his own, kissing him deeply, his hands carding through his fluffy hair. They both sigh into the kiss, the crease between Yunho’s brows disappearing, and Mingi pulls away to look down at him softly. “I know you just can’t wait to get crushed by me in the toothpaste game, but I can promise you I’ll be just as good tomorrow,” he assures him, kissing the corner of Yunho’s lips which are already turning into a sleepy smile. 

“I love you,” Yunho whispers, before surging upwards to kiss him again. Mingi indulges him, because the prospect of being late feels like nothing with Yunho’s soft lips against his own, his flushed cheeks and messy bedhead beneath him. 

“I love you,” he mumbles into him, and then, knowing an unhealthily energetic Wooyoung is waiting for him, he reluctantly leaves, speeding through his normally slow and drawn out morning routine alone before heading out, running to catch an early bus that will get him to campus on time. 

On the bus, he tries to balance, but a little girl a few seats down glares at him, and so he ends up sitting down, trying his hardest to hide a pout from her judgemental gaze the rest of the ride. 

Wooyoung is literally buzzing when Mingi meets up with him, and he’s scared for a second that someone decided to feed him caffeine, until Wooyoung confirms that’s _exactly_ what happened, and Yeosang is the one to blame. 

They’ve staked out the science building’s entrance, and it’s 7:12, and students are just starting to approach for their class in three minutes. 

“Hi, my name’s Wooyoung,” Wooyoung says, smiling brightly, to the first unlucky student, who looks like he’s half asleep as he nods at the boy before ignoring his outstretched hand entirely to enter the building. Wooyoung’s expression doesn’t falter even slightly, and he skips over to a group of girls approaching the building. “Hi everyone, I’m Wooyoung, it’s nice to meet you!”

Mingi watches them laugh a bit at his friend, waving and saying hello before they too pass by, heading off to class. 

When it gets a little busier, Mingi approaches some of the students, forcing them over to meet Wooyoung too, but the rush before class ends too quickly and Wooyoung’s stuck looking at his timer stuck with still over six years left, no change except for the few minutes that had passed. 

They go to every single academic building that day, plotting out strategic times to catch nearly every student walking in and out, especially after the big lecture classes are let out, and they introduce themselves to everyone they meet, catching some weird stares and whispering everywhere they go. 

Come late afternoon, and most of the bigger classes are over, and they have no luck, completely exhausted with no idea what else to do. 

“Maybe it’s hopeless,” Wooyoung says, stretching out on the grass space beside Mingi, and the older boy frowns down at him. “Maybe it is impossible.”

“It’s not impossible,” Mingi assures him, confident for once that he’s right, and that there’s an answer here that they’re just missing. “We’re going to find him, we’ll find a way.”

Wooyoung looks up at Mingi appreciatively, and Mingi grins. “The library?” he asks, a sheepish grin on his face, and Mingi bursts out laughing. 

Come Tuesday, and they’re back in the library, exactly where they started. No, Wooyoung does not apologize to Mingi, and yes, that is ridiculously unfair. 

Mingi has no idea what they’re looking for, but they’re combing through the shelves, desperately searching for _anything_ soulmates, or even something completely ridiculous that sparks some sort of inspiration. 

“Maybe I should just get famous,” Wooyoung suggests, laughing as he pulls random books from the shelves, definitely messing up whatever organization system they’re using. “Someone can see my face over social media or television, and meet me that way.”

Mingi snorts. “You could never become famous, you’re too chaotic.”

“Too chaotic?” Wooyoung starts, his eyebrows raised to the ceiling. “ _You’re_ calling _me_ chaotic?”

“You are literally destroying the library,” Mingi deadpans, gesturing to Wooyoung’s hands, which are still messing with the shelves. “You could never be famous.”

Someone clears their throat behind them, and they both jump out of their skins. Mingi turns around slowly, waiting to be yelled at by library staff. 

He’s met with a surprising sight, one of his closest friends staring back at the two of them. Wooyoung lets out a strangled noise beside him. 

“Famous, probably not,” Hongjoong says, a grin taking over his features, “But you may be on the right track…”

_6 years, 142 days, 8 hours, 53 minutes, 31 seconds_


	3. Chapter 3

_6 years, 142 days, 8 hours, 52 minutes, 8 seconds_

While Wooyoung grills Hongjoong on how he overheard them and what his idea could possibly be, Mingi is busy trying to figure out what Hongjoong’s doing in the _library_ , and not in that fancy studio of his. 

“I overheard you because you’re busy being absolutely obnoxious in what is supposed to be a _quiet space_ ,” Hongjoong reveals, rolling his eyes. “I’m doing everyone a favor by getting you to shut up.”

Mingi glances around, and notices eyes on them from every corner of the library. He awkwardly shuffles to where Wooyoung had been destroying the shelves, reaching out to fix them as best as he can. 

“I don’t care about your _quiet space_ ,” Wooyoung fires back. “I want to know what you’re talking about. We’re close? Close how? Do you have a plan?”

Hongjoong grins. “You said social media, didn’t you?” Wooyoung nods, and Mingi stops his fiddling with the books to look at Hongjoong curiously. “Well screw being famous, why don’t you just post your timer on social media instead?”

Wooyoung’s eyes go wide, and Mingi blinks a few times, cursing his slow brain that needs extra time to catch up. “Do what now?”

Hongjoong sighs. “If he posts his timer on social media, and then tags the school or something, we can connect with people who have similar times, people with a much higher potential of being his soulmate.”

It’s Mingi’s turn to widen his eyes. “That’s genius,” he says, hope flooding his senses for the first time since he agreed to help Wooyoung. 

“Of course it is,” Hongjoong says, smirking. 

Wooyoung grins. “Social media,” he breathes. “I _am_ a genius.”

Mingi is pretty sure Hongjoong is going to kill Wooyoung then, as with each word the younger boy proudly boasts about the idea, the smaller boy’s frown intensifies. 

“ _Your_ idea?” Hongjoong asks, anger coloring his features. “I’m sorry, who am I now?”

Wooyoung eyes him up and down. “An irrelevant short assh-”

“Alright!” Mingi says, clapping his hands together and stepping between the two. He’s seen the result of too many incidents involving Hongjoong and someone calling him short, and he’s not sure it’s the time nor the place for another one. “Let’s go somewhere else to work this out.” He grabs Hongjoong, who is protesting lightly, but they manage to make their way out of the library safely, receiving a handful of dirty looks along the way (which Mingi is noticing now that he’s paying attention). 

To Mingi’s absolute excitement, after Hongjoong calms down and decides not to murder Wooyoung, he leads the pair to his fancy studio in the arts building. 

“I was beginning to think this place wasn’t real,” Mingi says, looking around at all the fancy equipment, the padded walls and giant computer screens, even Hongjoong’s own leather rolling chair, which Mingi flings himself into immediately, spinning around in a circle. The studio is pretty small, but not too small that Mingi can’t extend his legs straight out while he’s spinning without touching the walls -- there’s still a few inches to go. 

“That’s enough,” Hongjoong says, grabbing the back of Mingi’s new chair and holding it in place. “Hop out, I need to get on my computer.”

Mingi pouts, but he leaves the chair, and he and Wooyoung crowd around Hongjoong as he pulls up Twitter on his computer. 

He pulls up the page for a new account, connecting it to his university email, and then typing in the personal information. Mingi snorts when he fills in the username spot with “littleb!tch” and types in his own password. Wooyoung is not so amused, and he smacks the back of Hongjoong’s head in protest. 

“That ‘little’ better be referring to the bitch part,” he says in a warning tone, and Mingi shoves him lightly. 

“Here, let me fix it,” Hongjoong says, sighing, and returning to the username slot. “tinyb!tch” pops up on the screen, and Wooyoung looks ready to fight. Mingi grabs him, holding him back while Hongjoong finishes up with the account information, his arms secured around the smaller boy’s waist. When Wooyoung calms down a bit as a Twitter feed comes onto the screen, Mingi refuses to let go, resting his chin on top of the head of purple hair beneath him, looking over Hongjoong’s shoulder at the computer. 

Hongjoong’s clicking and typing fills the otherwise silent room, and Mingi feels his heart beginning to race as he works, getting closer and closer to a possible end to this, a completed timer and a soulmate for Wooyoung just around the corner for them. 

He’s not sure how he does it, but one second he blinks and then Hongjoong has already posted, sliding back in his chair to admire his work. 

Wooyoung detaches himself from Mingi, and walks closer to the screen, his eyes wide with something indecipherable in them. “This is it?” he asks, and Hongjoong nods proudly. He reaches out towards the screen, the frozen time reflected on it, and Mingi’s breath hitches in his throat, and it would be emotional and wholesome except that Hongjoong ruins it all by slapping Wooyoung’s hand when it’s an inch away. 

“Hey!” he snaps. “Get your slimy fingers away from my screen!”

“My _slimy_ fingers?” Wooyoung steps back, raising his eyebrows. “How about your slimy--”

“C’mon, guys, that’s enough,” Mingi says, already tired of the two of them bickering. He would be happy, and he is, that his friends have warmed up to each other so quickly, enough to mess around like they’ve known each other for years, but he’s antsy looking at the post in front of him, and he wants updates. “Refresh the page.”

Hongjoong shakes his head, but he listens to Mingi, clicking the refresh button at the top of the page. There’s no change. Mingi’s heart falls, but eyeing Wooyoung, who’s looking relaxed for the first time since they’ve started this search as he looks at the tweet, he hangs on to a bit of his hope. 

“Pull out your phones,” Hongjoong commands, and before Mingi can think about it too much, he’s listening. “Make sure you have Twitter, we’ll each log in to the account so we can keep track of it.”

Mingi nods, pulling open the Twitter app, and adding a new account. He types “tinyb!tch,” but is stuck on the password part.

“Password?” Wooyoung asks, still pretending to be annoyed at Hongjoong (Mingi knows better, he has a look of fondness the smaller boy only reserves for his friends on his face). 

Hongjoong spins around in his chair (totally not making Mingi jealous) and grins at them. “Hongjoongisthebest,” he says. “Capital H, no spaces.”

The first thing Mingi notices when logging into the account is his notifications tab, which shows one new notification. Expecting it to be something about the new account, he clicks on it without thinking, his eyes going wide at the revelation, a new like on their tweet. 

“Someone liked it!” Wooyoung yells, jumping up and down. Hongjoong’s grin grows wider, and he pumps his arm in victory. Mingi is frozen, a million feelings coursing through him. After zero progress so far, he had been ready to give up, but he hadn’t realized how attached he had become to this until they had their first success, and he recognizes feelings in him as ones he noticed in Wooyoung in their first meeting -- excitement, anticipation, impatience, hope -- and he lets himself go to them as he flings himself onto Wooyoung, ruffling the boy’s hair and cheering along with him. 

They’re making steps forward, finally, and Mingi can’t wait for what’s next. 

They decide to part a few minutes later (after Hongjoong decides that maybe the soundproofing in his studio isn’t strong enough for the chaos that is Mingi and Wooyoung), both too tired from the hectic weekend they shared (and also very behind on their studies) to hang out afterwards, and Mingi makes his way back to his apartment alone. 

He checks the post every few minutes, making sure to retweet it on his own personal account, tagging some accounts he knows are affiliated with the university. 

By the time he gets home, there are 127 likes, 8 retweets, and 4 new follows to the account. 

No comments, and no one claiming that the timer is anything like theirs, but Mingi’s ecstatic that it already has so much attention. 

He spends the rest of the afternoon trying to make up some of his work from the past two days of classes he’s skipped (not to mention the entire weekend of studying lost), but he spends more time checking his phone than reading his textbooks, and after a few hours, he just gives up, browsing around on Twitter and stalking all of the accounts than like and share on his tweet, looking through the new comments that had been added since he last checked. 

_So close!_ one of the comments says, with an image of a timer with six years and 147 days, just days off of Wooyoung’s. Other people have tagged their friends, _isn’t this close to yours?_ , and Mingi clicks on all of the respective accounts, but there’s nothing perfect, not yet.

He’s curled up on the couch when Yunho comes home, textbooks all around him and yet his eyes glued to his phone, and he looks up to greet his boyfriend with a smile. 

“Being productive?” Yunho asks sarcastically, a grin on his face as he eyes Mingi on his phone. Mingi throws his phone to the side, eyes wide. 

“Yes,” he lies, and Yunho laughs, coming over to the couch and moving some of the books around him so he can sit down too. As soon as he does, the older boy throws himself on Mingi, and Mingi relaxes into his hold, carding a hand through the blonde boy’s hair, holding him tightly to his chest as he settles back on the couch. “Bad day?” he asks, pouting, but Yunho shakes his head. 

“No, I just missed you,” he mumbles into Mingi shirt, and Mingi coos at him, pulling him closer and wrapping his legs around his thighs, locking him in. 

“How about we stay here forever then,” Mingi suggests, and Yunho hums. “You can’t miss me if I never let you go.”

“Sounds perfect,” Yunho mumbles into his collarbone, and Mingi giggles cause it tickles his skin. 

He settles in with Yunho, 100% ready for a nice evening nap, and then his phone, which the other boy has set carefully on the coffee table beside them, buzzes with a notification. He considers ignoring it, his eyes heavy and Yunho so soft and comfy on top of him, but then it buzzes a second time, and he can’t get his mind off of it. 

“Baby?” he asks softly, and Yunho hums again. “Would you mind reaching over there and grabbing my phone for me?”

Yunho sits up a bit, peering down at Mingi. “What’s up with the phone?” he asks curiously. “You were on it when I got home too.”

Mingi grins. “Hand it to me, I’ll show you.” Yunho has a disbelieving look in his eyes, but he hands Mingi his phone and then settles back into his chest to look at whatever Mingi shows him. “Hongjoong came up with an idea for the search for Wooyoung’s soulmate. We posted his timer on Twitter, I’ve just been keeping up with the responses to it. There are a lot so far, just look.”

He shows Yunho, checking the new notifications, which are just a few likes and shares, no one new claiming to know someone with something similar to Wooyoung. 

“I was wondering why you weren’t off driving with him this afternoon,” Yunho says, nuzzling his nose back into Mingi’s neck as the younger boy refreshes the app again, scrolling through the comments he’s already read a thousand times. “That’s a really good idea, baby, I’m glad it seems to be going somewhere already.”

It’s Mingi’s turn to hum, grateful that Yunho understands, and he rubs his back up and down in an effort to let the boy fall asleep, not taking his eyes off the phone in front of him. Missing a notification would just be more unnecessary time lost for Wooyoung, and he wonders if the smaller boy is checking the tweet as religiously as he is. 

He gets a text a few moments later, revealing the younger boy is, in fact, in the same headspace as Mingi. 

**_tinybitch_ ** _  
have you seen the notifs??????  
alksdfd   
theres so much attention wtfff??_

He laughs, and Yunho groans at the noise. “Shh,” he coos, kissing the top of Yunho’s head, “I’m sorry, go to sleep please.”

Yunho stays quiet about the Twitter post until dinner that night, when Mingi has reached for his phone for the third time since they started eating, his food untouched next to Yunho’s nearly empty plate. 

“Mingi,” Yunho says, and his voice is stern, stern enough that Mingi looks up immediately, phone forgotten in his hand. “Maybe we could take a break for dinner? Just a short while when we _don’t_ check the post?”

"I'm sorry," Mingi says, sighing, but he places his phone back on the table, face down, as he looks at Yunho. "It's just all so exciting, isn't it? This could lead to his soulmate! I just had no idea how much anticipation it all is."

Yunho laughs a bit, but Mingi frowns when it doesn't seem to quite reach his eyes. "It's not even your soulmate," he says, and there's enough fondness in his voice now that Mingi forgets about his empty laughter. "Wooyoung is going to be okay without you losing your mind over his soulmate 24/7." He comes closer to Mingi to pat him on the head affectionately. "Just calm down a bit, don't stress so much. Everything is going to work out."

Mingi relaxes into Yunho's touch, but he barely registers his words, everything in him itching to reach for his phone at the end of the table, just to refresh the page, maybe just turn it over to check his notifications, even turning on the ringer, so he can hear them coming in… 

Yunho sighs, but he leans down to kiss his forehead. Mingi’s broken from his thoughts, smiling up at his boyfriend softly. "C'mon," Yunho says, reaching for his plate to put back in the kitchen. "Let's call it an early night."

~

The next morning, Mingi wakes to an empty bed. 

Panic floods all of his senses when he reaches for Yunho and he’s not there, and then he shoots up in his bed, pulling the sheets back desperately like the boy was just hiding beneath them. 

“Yunho?” he calls, and there are tears in his eyes already, before he can even think straight, because Yunho can’t be gone, he has to be here, he’s always here, he’s never been missing when Mingi wakes up, and he’s still freaking himself out when he finds the note placed carefully on his bedside table. 

_Don’t worry,_ the note says, and Mingi laughs through his tears as he recognizes Yunho’s handwriting. _I had to head out early, everything’s alright. I’ll see you for dinner!_ There's a cute little smiley face and a puppy face holding hands in a ridiculous doodle beneath the note that Mingi can’t help but smile at. 

It’s a little empty, the apartment without Yunho, and Mingi speeds through the morning routine a lot faster than he would with the other boy by his side. Despite the fact that he makes it to the bus with plenty of time to spare (for the first time literally ever), he’s not sure he likes the feeling very much, enjoying his usually laid-back mornings so much more. 

He makes it through all of his morning lectures, though he’s not sure he retained much of anything the professors were saying, his eyes glued to the Twitter post that now has over 600 likes, so many more comments filled with people claiming the timer is close to theirs. 

Mingi checks it all through lunch, which he eats alone, and he switches between Twitter and watching Wooyoung’s timer, which he’s got on his phone in one of those countdown apps. It’s a little crazy, he knows, and even if Wooyoung’s timer on his wrist suddenly changes, the digital clock in front of him won’t be able to recognize that. But he thinks again about Wooyoung’s eyes when he looks at his timer and he feels a bit of attachment to it himself. 

Food forgotten on his tray, Mingi reaches for the bracelet around his wrist (matching Yunho’s, that they got a few weeks after they met as freshmen), untying it to reveal the timer beneath. 

_0 years, 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds_

He looks back to the timer on his phone. 

_6 years, 141 days, 6 hours, 43 minutes, 56 seconds_

He watches for a moment. _55, 54, 53._ When he looks at the empty numbers on his own wrist, his heart falls a bit in a way he’s scared to think too much about. 

_6 years, 141 days,_ he thinks, and he sighs. He hopes the post will work, because he’s not sure how he can wait that long, how _Wooyoung_ can wait that long. Mingi has a good feeling, though, a feeling that they’re going somewhere, they’re so close, even when it seems so far away. 

When he makes it back home, the place is empty, and Mingi finds a seat at the kitchen counter, pulling out his phone already while he waits for Yunho. 

His boyfriend isn’t far behind him, walking through the door just moments later, and Mingi’s reading up on a new comment about a student a few towns over with a friend whose timer is nearly exactly Wooyoung’s when he hears him. 

“Check this out,” he says cheerfully, scrolling back to the top of the post. “There are so many new likes and shares, and a couple of good leads, it’s doing so well, and--”

And then he looks up, and he feels his heart shatter into a million pieces in a way he’s never experienced before. Because Yunho is all dressed up before him, in a suit and with his makeup done, and he’s holding a box in front of him and it’s from Mingi’s favorite bakery, and his eyes are full of tears as he looks at Mingi with the phone in his hand and he looks so sad and Mingi can’t _breathe_. 

“Today’s our six year anniversary,” Yunho says, his voice surprisingly calm. “Today makes six years since we’ve met.”

“It can’t be,” Mingi says, eyes wide, his heart racing, frozen to his seat. “It can’t be,” he repeats, his words breathless and empty, “It can’t, six years isn’t for another 141 days, and--”

And then realization crashes over him like a wave, and he looks up at Yunho, who looks like he’s known all along. 

Yunho sets the box down beside Mingi at the counter, and then wipes his face and all of the little pieces of Mingi’s heart reform in his chest and then shatter again, everything in him wants to reach out to the boy in front of him, but he can’t because he’s frozen, frozen like the clock on his wrist _should_ be. 

“You’re stuck,” Yunho says, taking a deep breath. "We stopped counting down when we met, Mingi. We were supposed to stop counting down when we met." His voice cracks. "We're done waiting, we're not waiting for anything anymore, you were all I was waiting for. The wait is over, and we're supposed to be building a life, one that started a long time ago. You're supposed to be helping me build it, helping me live it, but it's like you're frozen in a time I left long ago. You've been so caught up in this soulmate thing, and you know I love Wooyoung and I love that you're helping him, but you've been so caught up in it that you're stuck. You're stuck counting down with Wooyoung's timer instead of counting forward with me, and for the first time in our lives we're moving in different directions and I don't know what to do about it."

He turns around before Mingi could say anything, not that he is able to form words in this moment, and makes his way to their bedroom, shutting the door behind him. 

Mingi can’t breathe cause his heart is broken because Yunho’s heart is broken but he has to breathe for Yunho who can’t because of him and he has to make things right so he wipes his face and ignores every inch of his body pulling him towards Yunho like they’re connected by something stronger than gravity and he leaves the apartment, calling Wooyoung on the phone. 

“Mingi?” Wooyoung asks, surprise in his tone. Mingi is walking down the hall, and he suppresses a sob at the sound of his friend’s voice. He can’t form the words, not at first, and Wooyoung’s voice shifts to concerned. “Mingi?”

“Can we meet up?” Mingi says, and he’s proud that his voice doesn’t break. “I need to talk to you now.”

“I’m in the area,” Wooyoung says. “I’ll meet you at the bus stop by your apartment?”

Mingi can’t say anything else, so he hangs up, spending the rest of the trip downstairs and to the bus stop down the street trying to calm his breathing. 

Wooyoung’s waiting for him, on the empty bench beneath the streetlight, and he perks up when Mingi sits down beside him, opening his mouth like he’s about to say something, before Mingi raises his hand to stop him. 

“I’m out,” Mingi says, his eyes on his feet, and Wooyoung stays silent beside him. “I can’t help you anymore.”

When Wooyoung speaks, he’s not angry like Mingi expects. Instead, his voice is soft. “Is everything okay?”

“Wooyoung,” Mingi says, looking up at the boy finally, “I think you should wait for your soulmate to come find you.” The smaller boy blinks back at him, and Mingi can’t read his expression. “I think that’s what is best. You’ll find your happiness if you’re patient, you’ll get what everyone else gets. Look at how great Seonghwa and Hongjoong have it, and you saw Jongho and Yeosang. Yun--” his voice cracks finally, and he notices the fresh tears streaking down his face. “How Yunho and I have it,” he finishes, wiping at his face. 

Wooyoung stays quiet, but he reaches out a hand to Mingi, gripping his tightly and squeezing comfortingly. 

“Yunho and I met six years ago today,” Mingi admits. “We met six years ago today, and I forgot.” Wooyoung’s hand squeezes his tighter, and he sighs. “I’ve loved this, I’m so glad you came into my life, and I had so much fun this past week with you.” He looks up, meeting the younger boy’s eyes, which are filled with sadness and understanding. “But I need to stop using your excitement and the journey you asked me on to avoid living my own life, starting my own journey. With Yunho.”

Wooyoung pulls Mingi closer, pushing his head down to rest on his shoulder. He nods into him, wiping the older boy’s tears and rubbing a hand up and down his back. Mingi sighs into the boy, trying his hardest not to let all of his sobs out but failing miserably, soaking the material of Wooyoung’s t-shirt. 

“I know,” Wooyoung says softly, and Mingi’s grateful he doesn’t mention the tears. “I know.” He sighs too, and Mingi grips his shirt tighter. “You’re right. But I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

Mingi pulls away for a moment, but Wooyoung won’t meet his eyes, running a hand through his purple hair as he looks at the ground near their feet, his eyes shimmering with fresh tears. 

“I would gladly wait for something as wonderful as what you and Yunho have,” Wooyoung says, a small smile crossing his face. “Every time I see you guys together, I think about how I could spend all of the time in my life waiting for something that pure and amazing. Every time.” There’s something weighing on Mingi’s chest that lifts then, and he feels fresh air fill his lungs. But Wooyoung is fiddling with his hands, still refusing to look up. “My mom is sick,” he says. “She’s really sick. She was hospitalized this past winter, and she hasn’t come home yet,” his voice cracks, and Mingi shifts closer again, their knees touching. He reaches for Wooyoung’s hands, separating them from each other and threading their fingers together. 

“You’re really close?” he asks, because Wooyoung looks like he’s having trouble finding the words, and the smaller boy lets out a strangled laugh, nodding his head, tears falling into his lap. 

“Yeah,” he says finally, looking up into Mingi’s eyes. Mingi remembers something about the first time they met, the desperation he had figured came from Wooyoung’s impatience and hyperactivity, that is reflected in his eyes now, desperation like he’s so close to giving up but just doesn’t know how. “I just want to bring someone home to her, just once,” Wooyoung admits, “because I’m not sure I can live with my other half never knowing her.” He chokes on another sob. “Never knowing someone so important to my life, and her never knowing him.” 

Wooyoung cries, falling into Mingi, and Mingi, who has never seen the boy cry before, holds him close and holds him tight, soothing him as best as he can with soft shushes and a comforting hand on his back. 

He doesn’t say anything, just letting the smaller boy cry it out, finally understanding his motivation and his desperation, his anxiousness that led him to picking Mingi, the first person he stumbled upon, and trying every ridiculous idea they could come up with. 

When he’s done, and the empty street is quiet again, Mingi pulls away slightly, throwing his arm over Wooyoung’s shoulder and staring at the street in front of them. 

“I wish things were different,” he says, and Wooyoung nods, and Mingi holds him close while they give up together. 

“I’m still waiting for you,” Wooyoung says to the empty street. He’s looking at it like he’s expecting his soulmate to pop out any second, but they both know better, and Mingi ruffles Wooyoung’s hair when there’s no response. “I’ll always be waiting for you,” he says, before leaning into Mingi’s touch and closing his eyes. 

Mingi knows the smaller boy is too upset to go home, on the complete other side of town, so he manages to get him standing and drags him back to his apartment. 

He stops at Seonghwa’s door, staying quiet because Wooyoung seems tired and he doesn’t want to disturb him, knocking softly. Hongjoong opens the door, wearing a bathrobe, his eyebrows raised at Mingi and his hands on his hips. 

His face softens immediately, however, when he turns to see Wooyoung in Mingi’s arms, and he pulls the smaller boy inside and into a hug immediately. Hugs for Hongjoong, those mean a lot, but Mingi knows that despite their bickering, Wooyoung means a lot to Hongjoong, he means a lot of all of them, already a part of their family. 

“Can he stay here tonight?” Mingi asks, and Hongjoong nods without question. He glances down the hall. “I have to go home.” He sighs. “I have to be home.”

Hongjoong nods again, turning to Wooyoung as Mingi leaves, facing his apartment. 

He finds Yunho in bed, wide awake but his back to Mingi, facing the opposite side of the room. The lights are on, and Mingi makes his way into their bed, climbing in beside him without question. 

He pulls Yunho towards him, reaching out for his hips, and the other boy rolls over onto his back, his head turned to Mingi, looking at him with eyes Mingi never wants to look away from. His hand finds Yunho’s cheek and he wipes the tear that has just slid down his face. 

“Last Thursday night, a stranger dumped his coffee on me in the middle of the night, and instead of apologizing, he asked me for a favor,” Mingi starts, and Yunho just looks at him, no questions or confusion in his eyes, just a silent understanding, a patience they’ve only ever had with each other. 

Mingi tells him everything, start to finish, not because it’s an explanation, but because he needs to talk to him, he needs to share everything with him, he wants Yunho to know everything. It’s been exhausting being apart from him, and he can’t take it any longer. He talks about Wooyoung, and how he sees it -- his impatience, his excitement, his anticipation and desperation.

“I got caught up in it,” Mingi says, caressing Yunho’s cheek. “It was addictive, his excitement about it all. But it’s nothing compared to the real thing, and Wooyoung knows that, and I know that.” He brushes back some of Yunho’s hair hanging over his eyes. “I told Wooyoung that, I told him it’s worth the wait, but he knows that too.”

Mingi sighs. “It’s different with Wooyoung.” He explains his situation with his mother, and for the first time, Yunho looks like he’s going to interrupt him. “I didn’t know,” Mingi explains, “but for Wooyoung, he couldn’t afford to think like that. He’s trying now.”

He nudges Yunho’s nose with his own, and that’s all it takes before the boy in front of him bursts into tears, pulling Mingi closer and burying his head in his chest. Mingi wraps his arms around him, holding his head gently, but he’s crying now too, and he doesn’t need words to know that Yunho knows he’s sorry, and that he loves him, and that he’s never letting him go. 

They cry together on their anniversary, and then Mingi pulls away slightly to cradle Yunho’s face in his hands, pulling him close to look at him directly.

“Do you remember the day we met?” Yunho asks, but it’s choked and it’s through tears and they both burst out laughing in response. Mingi is so happy and he can breathe, and he can’t help but press a soft kiss to Yunho’s nose before he responds. 

“It was the start of everything,” he says, and Yunho grins. “But so is this,” Mingi says, holding him close, “This is the start of everything too, and so is tomorrow, and the next day, and then after it’s just the rest of our lives, full of new starts and beginnings and even endings, but I’m counting forward,” he assures him, “And I’m holding onto you through it all, I promise.”

Yunho’s arms are around him, and his face is buried in his neck, and they’re so close Mingi feels whole again. “I’m never letting go,” Yunho whispers, and Mingi falls asleep feeling his heart pressed against his own, beating in time. 

~

Mingi wakes before Yunho, and he lies there, staring at the boy’s angelic face, lit up by the bit of sunlight streaming into the room from their room. 

They’re lying so close, their noses nearly touching, and Mingi thinks he could stay here forever, just watching the other boy sleep so peacefully. 

He makes sure to turn off their alarm, and then settles back in, his hand finding Yunho’s, who grasps on tight to it even in his sleep. He brings the hand up to kiss his knuckles softly, and it’s this gesture that has Yunho slowly blinking, shifting around with a little crease in between his eyebrows before he sees Mingi, his eyes lighting up immediately and a smile crossing his face. 

“Goodmorning sunshine,” Mingi breathes, and Yunho yawns, and it sends him reeling, heart racing and excitement flooding through every part of his body. Because the boy in front of him is exciting, and waking up today just to watch him yawn and smile is what Mingi is sure he was put on this planet to do. 

Yunho kisses the back of his hand in response, and then pulls Mingi closer by the waist. “Goodmorning,” he mumbles into his lips, before kissing him softly, and Mingi melts, breathing in Yunho, shifting even closer and deepening the kiss. 

Yunho bites at his bottom lip softly, and Mingi hums, opening his mouth for Yunho to slip his tongue inside. He cards his hand through the other boy’s soft hair, hoping to incite a sound in Yunho like the one he just gave him, but the only sound he gets in response is a sudden pounding coming from their door. 

They jerk apart, eyeing the hall leading to the rest of their apartment. Someone knocks louder on the door, and then Mingi hears screaming and what sounds like someone trying to kick the door down. 

Mingi and Yunho look at each other, and then simultaneously bolt towards the door, opening it to reveal a frantic Wooyoung in boxers and bare feet, his hand raised to pound on the door some more, nearly hitting Mingi straight in the face. 

His eyes widen at the sight of the two of them, and then suddenly he’s shoving his arm in their faces. “It’s changed, it’s changed!” he yells, and then jumps up and down a few times (moving around too much for the others to see what he’s talking about), screeching incoherently. 

Mingi grabs his outstretched arm, holding it still, and his heart nearly stops. Sure enough, the boy in front of them is right, the timer has changed. 

_0 years, 2 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes, 3 seconds_

Wooyoung’s eyes are bright and a little shiny, like he’s about to cry, and Mingi feels pretty close to the same. 

“I have to go find him, I just know I do,” Wooyoung says, and for the first time, Mingi believes him without question. 

He hesitates though, feeling Yunho beside him, but suddenly, the older boy is wrapping his arm around Mingi’s waist, putting his other hand on Wooyoung’s shoulder. “Yeah, you guys do,” he says, and Mingi’s heart soars. 

He jumps on Yunho, throwing his arms around his neck, and kisses every inch of his face he can reach. Yunho is giggling, but Wooyoung, who is still jumping up and down like he just can’t contain his energy, whines at them. 

“That’s disgusting!” he complains, pretending to shield his eyes. “We have to go, we have to go!”

Mingi breaks away from Yunho, who is shoving at his face, and eyes the half-naked boy in front of him. “You’re gonna need to put some motherfucking pants on,” he says, and the smaller boy looks down. “I don’t think the bus is gonna take you like that.”

So Wooyoung changes, and they race to the bus stop. There’s only a pair of seats in the back open, and so they weave through the crowd of people, but when they get there, Wooyoung refuses his seat, and Mingi’s too excited to sit down anyways. 

When the bus starts moving, and Wooyoung rushes to the center aisle, sticking his arms straight out to the sides, surfing, Mingi feels his jaw drop. Wooyoung does it so unapologetically, despite the weird glances he’s getting, and Mingi’s chest explodes with warmth. Without a single comment, he jumps behind him and partakes in his little game. 

They’re laughing like mad by the time they make it to campus, a few close calls on the bus that have them practically hanging on each other (Wooyoung had to catch Mingi after he nearly wiped out on top of an elderly passenger sitting a few seats down from them). 

They have no idea where to go when they step off the bus, but Wooyoung just starts walking and Mingi follows. 

They’re in the green space, facing the humanities side of campus, when Mingi sees it.

Wooyoung’s timer, exposed on his wrist, but the numbers are counting down, the seconds like they’re flying, the minutes every second, the hours slow but steady. They’re counting, and then they’re counting faster, and Mingi makes a strangled sound as he tries to get Wooyoung’s attention, but they’re already at zero and Wooyoung’s eyes are locked on someone’s across the quad, frozen in his place, and his timer also exposed on his wrist. 

Mingi sees Wooyoung blink twice, and then on the third beat, he takes off in a sprint across the lawn, meeting his soulmate halfway where they fall into each other’s arms. 

His heart soaring, he jumps up and down, screaming and hollering in victory, cheering on the pair across the lawn, and everyone within a mile’s radius is watching them, and he’s pretty sure Wooyoung is crying, but he’s not letting go of the boy he’s holding, and Mingi doesn’t expect him to for a long time. 

Mingi’s still disbelieving, feeling tears in his own eyes at the sight in front of him, and he wishes more than anything that Yunho was here to see this, so he pulls out his phone to start filming like a proud parent. 

He hides it in his pocket the second Wooyoung turns to look at him, flashing him a wide smile and a big thumbs up. He smiles fondly at the smaller boy, giving him his own thumbs up back. 

They eventually make their way to Mingi, but it takes some time, as Wooyoung’s got both of his arms circling the boy’s waist and the other has Wooyoung tucked into his chest, and Mingi swears the scene looks familiar but he’s too busy wearing a dopey smile on his face as they approach. 

The stranger is smiling so wide Mingi’s not sure how he’ll be able to speak, but he manages just fine, nodding at Mingi over Wooyoung’s head. “I’m San,” he introduces. “I would shake your hand, but…” he trails off, looking down at the boy in his arms. Mingi laughs. 

“I understand.” San looks back up at him, dark hair hanging in front of his eyes, a pair of crescents from all of the smiling. 

“I’d have to let him go,” he explains sheepishly, and Mingi thinks he can see red in his ears, just barely visible through his long hair. 

“No,” Wooyoung protests, his voice firm as he tightens his grip. Mingi and San laugh at him, but Wooyoung isn’t one to feel shame, and he unapologetically shoves his face in San’s neck. 

“I’m Mingi,” Mingi says, to San, who doesn’t take his eyes off the purple haired boy, but nods to show he’s listening. 

“Wooyoung told me.”

Wooyoung mumbles something indecipherable into San’s neck. 

“Baby, use your words,” San says, and Wooyoung whines at the nickname, burying his face even further. Mingi sees his ears go bright pink, and he laughs a bit to himself. 

After a few moments, Wooyoung turns his head to the side. His face is red like his ears, but he’s still smiling, like he can’t help himself. “How did you find me?” he asks again.

San launches into his story about how the night before, he’d gotten this strange and sudden feeling in his chest, like someone was calling out for him, like he needed to go find his soulmate. “I spent the whole night lying awake wondering if I was crazy,” San explains. “Wondering if it was even possible. But I ultimately understood that the feeling was real, and I needed to follow it.”

Wooyoung has a look on his face when San’s speaking like the way Yeosang looks at Jongho, and like Mingi’s proud to admit (okay maybe not in front of Hongjoong) the way he looks at Yunho. San pauses in his explanation every two seconds to glance down at Wooyoung, and each time Mingi watches him tilt his head to the side and rub the side of his face against Wooyoung’s purple hair.

“I actually saw your Twitter post,” San admits, and Mingi’s eyes go wide. “I thought it was too good to be true at first, but when I got in the car this morning all I could think of was this university, and heading here first. The second I put the car in drive,” he pauses to look at Wooyoung again, nudging their noses together softly. “It was so quick, it jumped down to two days instantly. I knew I was doing the right thing then.”

Mingi explains their story in return, but he’s not sure how much either of the two new lovebirds got out of his explanation. He offers to take them back to his apartment. “I just know Yunho’s making a big breakfast, we should go see him,” he says. (Just soulmate things). 

The others agree, and they head back together.

They’re halfway to the bus stop when Mingi watches Wooyoung pry himself off of San (with a little resistance from the other boy). That’s about all he sees before his vision is stifled by a head of purple, and Wooyoung’s holding him so tight he can’t breathe (is everyone focused on suffocating Mingi this week?). But he understands Wooyoung’s hug, and the way he sighs into him, not quite like the way he understands Yunho, but something not too far off, and he wraps his arms around the smaller boy and sighs too. 

“Thank you,” Wooyoung says, but Mingi didn’t even have to hear it to know he was thinking it, and he explodes with happiness when he smiles and says back, “No, thank _you._ ” 

_0 years, 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last bit, a short epilogue, hope you enjoyed! :)

_0 years, 9 days, 12 hours, 2 minutes, 54 seconds_

Mingi likes to think the beginning for him was with Yunho. And he’s no longer thinking back to high school, with crooked bow ties and Harry Potter shirts, he’s talking about the light reflected on Yunho’s face every morning they wake up together, every day they start together, every new moment they share. It’s the light reflected on his face every Saturday night, from the television, as he’s snuggled in Mingi’s lap in the smallest chair in Seonghwa’s living room, watching a movie with the rest of the family. 

Family movie night has become a weekly thing, or at least they’ve done it now three times in three weeks, and Mingi loves it so much.

“All I’m saying is, you’re completely wrong, and it’s okay,” Wooyoung is saying as they make their way up the stairs to Mingi’s floor of the apartment complex. 

“Soulmates can’t read each other’s minds.” Mingi rolls his eyes at the younger boy. “Don’t you think I would know if I could read Yunho’s mind?”

“How else did San hear me that night?” Wooyoung protests, and Mingi sighs. “I called out to him, and he _heard_ me. That sounds a lot like he’s reading my mind.”

“You guys defied all soulmate logic by meeting _six and a half_ years early,” Mingi points out. “Don’t ask me how your soulmate bond works, it seems a little unheard of.”

“Okay, but like, have you ever noticed that you know things about Yunho, without any explanation? How about that time you told San and I to bring dinner with us after classes, because you could just sense Yunho burning food at home?”

“I have known Yunho for six years,” Mingi says, “I’ve been living with him for over three years, and he is always burning food at home.”

Wooyoung snorts. They’re nearly to Seonghwa and Hongjoong’s apartment, so their argument is wrapping up. “Okay, okay. But does Yunho ever seem to know what you’re thinking? Maybe it’s a one way thing. I’ve never been able to see anything San’s thinking.” He pouts. 

Mingi flashes back to every single time Yunho has answered a question of his, without him ever getting the chance to ask it aloud. “Maybe--”

The door swings open, Hongjoong poking his head out. “Do you guys want to come inside?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “Or are you just planning on standing out there for the rest of the night. Cause we can hear you guys all the way inside, you’re gonna disturb the neighbors.”

Wooyoung pushes his way through without apology, Mingi laughing as he follows. 

They make their way to the living room, where everyone else already is. San is standing next to Yeosang, talking with the older boy, when Wooyoung sees him. Mingi watches the boy completely lose it, running over to his soulmate and jumping into his arms like they haven’t seen each other in an eternity. (Mingi was with the two of them at lunch).

He legit _lifts his legs_ off the ground to wrap around San’s waist, and Mingi has to give the other boy credit, because he manages to hold onto him alright (Mingi’s sure he himself would’ve toppled over backwards already), burying his own face into the smaller boy’s neck. 

He’s shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the scene in front of him when Yunho approaches him, a soft smile on his face and eyes that _still_ leave Mingi breathless. 

“What am I thinking right now?” Mingi demands once he can breathe properly, and Yunho laughs, grabbing his hand and pulling him closer. 

“About how much you want to kiss me?” he asks, and Mingi blinks up at him in awe. 

“Wow,” he breathes, “You really can read my mind. Bastard,” he mumbles, but it’s barely audible against Yunho’s lips, which are pressed to his suddenly. Mingi relaxes, cupping Yunho’s cheek, only pulling away to press soft kisses to Yunho’s nose, forehead, and cheek. 

“I love you,” Yunho whispers, squeezing his hand. He kisses Mingi’s cheek in return, and then they pull away. 

“I love you too,” Mingi whispers back, pulling Yunho by the hand to join the others in the living room. 

“Okay, that’s enough,” Hongjoong says. “I’m allowing all of that, whatever it was,” he says, waving at Yunho and Mingi, San and Wooyoung, “but that’s enough, this is my home too now and I am not putting up with the PDA.”

Mingi laughs, turning to the side to press a wet and noisy kiss to Yunho’s cheek. “I think you’re just gonna have to get used to it, Joongie.”

Hongjoong pouts, but Seonghwa comes up behind him and wraps his arms around his waist, pressing his own kiss to the side of his face. Hongjoong makes a face, but Mingi watches the way he relaxes into Seonghwa’s hold, and soon, everyone’s laughing at him. 

The small boy turns bright red, and turns to hide in Seonghwa’s embrace, which only succeeds in making everyone laugh harder. The oldest glares at them over the top of Hongjoong’s head, and they stop laughing instantly. 

“The pizza should be here soon,” he says, his voice stern. “You guys should find your seats, let’s get this movie going.”

Everyone listens to Seonghwa, but Mingi catches Jongho whispering something in Yeosang’s ear that has him hiding a laugh behind his hand. They all make their way to their seats, which aren’t assigned but might as well be, and Mingi finds his place with Yunho on his lap in the smallest chair in the room, Jongho and Yeosang closest to them on the couch, with Wooyoung and San on the other side, and Hongjoong and Seonghwa in their loveseat. 

The two oldest get the film set up, and Mingi gets comfortable with Yunho in his arms. 

Mingi loves family movie nights. 

He loves how everyone’s together, and there’s no couple’s side of the room anymore, Wooyoung and San taking up the empty side of the couch. He loves their perfect harmony, and Hongjoong all vulnerable on the opposite side of the room as Seonghwa combs his fingers through his hair. He loves San, who he’s known just 9 days, staring at Wooyoung instead of the television screen. He loves Wooyoung, alternating between sitting in San’s lap and resting his head on Yeosang’s shoulder, keeping his fingers intertwined with San’s the whole time. 

He loves Yeosang, glaring at Wooyoung every time he comes near, but relaxing into his embrace every time as well, and the way he and Jongho sit so close with their legs tangled together, Jongho playing with the ends of his hair aimlessly, turning his head to the side to kiss the shell of his ear every few moments, whispering things that have Yeosang giggling to himself, and yet they _still_ refuse to admit they’re dating. He meets Seonghwa’s eyes over the purple head of Wooyoung shifting to sit in San’s lap again, and they smile together at the group so happy. 

But then someone shifts in Mingi’s lap, and he’s now facing Yunho, who’s looking at him so softly it should be illegal. They just look for a few moments, and then Mingi pulls him closer, fitting his head in the space below his chin as he holds him tight. He kisses the top of his head, cradling him so carefully, and whispers how much he loves him into his hair. Yunho squeezes one of his hands in response, and Mingi relaxes further, too focused on the boy in his arms to pay attention to the movie. He’s not too concerned about it, cause he’s holding his heart and together, they have all the time in the world. 

_6 years, 10 days, 11 hours, 26 minutes, 48 seconds and counting_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dare me to write a jongsang oneshot in this au


End file.
